I woke up this morning scrambling to try and to turn off the alarm screaming from my iPhone, only to be shocked by what I saw…

September 1.

I don’t know you about you, but I can’t believe it is already September. Seems like just a little while ago, I was putting away my Christmas decorations. But I am not complaining. I absolutely love the Fall. Football, bonfires, the smell of apples and cinnamon in the air, pumpkins, cooler weather and a new wardrobe. Hooray for jeans and comfy sweatshirts, right?

Something else I love about the Fall is how the leaves change color and eventually fall to the ground, leaving the trees bare. There is something vulnerable about a bare tree, isn’t there? Just left empty to brave the cold months of winter. But even trees know when enough is enough and it is time to change. In the perfect way God created nature, the trees know that if the leaves remain, the weight from the ice and snow of winter will break the limbs and could even kill them.

But how many of us keep holding on to the things that will hurt us? Or could even kill us… emotionally, spiritually and perhaps even physically? The things that will weigh us down and keep us from the new thing that God is trying to create in us?

Like the leaves fall to the ground, allow what you’re holding on to fall into God’s restoring hands. If you do so, you too can be healed and renewed for what’s next. Don’t fear the cold. You’re created to withstand it. And God will do a new thing with you … from the inside out.

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:18-19

Read September’s Dirty Girls Ministries’ Newsletter