I feel old. Not because I’m achy or tired or anything like that. I just realized that 20 years ago the pilot episode of that classic sitcom Friends aired on NBC.

20 years. That means that half the students in college weren’t even born when Rachel came running into Central Perk in her wedding gown. I need to sit down.

I still love that show. I think I love it so much because the characters are so real and so many of the moments ring true. It’s not like so many sitcoms where the dialogue is basically endless setups for punch-lines.

Plus, who doesn’t like friends?

I’ve been blessed with some good ones. So many who love me for me, not as I should be but as I am, warts and all. So many who inspire and challenge me and — best of all– help make me more like Jesus.

Not every friend in my life is a forever friend. Some were only in my life for a season and for a specific purpose. Some weren’t good for me. But God used all of them to grow me up a little.

I’ve learned I can’t expect my friends to be something I’m not. I can’t hold them to a standard that I don’t live up to myself.

I love that Jesus is the friend who sticks closer than a brother. He said that He calls us friends because He’s let us in on the great mystery of what God is up to in the world and invited us to be a part of it.

I read something that made me pause: “Love is an act of endless forgiveness.”

I think that applies to friendship as well as romantic love. I forgive because I know I will need to be forgiven at some point. Probably at many points. You and I forgive primarily because God in Jesus has already forgiven us of so much.

I also love the fact that the one time I took a “Which Friends Character Are You Most Like?” Quiz and got Phoebe. They were more right than they knew.

I’d be okay with mornings if they didn’t come around so often. Or so early.

I actually managed to wake up on my own in time to make it to work, which is a good thing since the volume on my radio alarm clock got mysteriously turned all the way down. Weird.

But I’m glad tomorrow is Friday. Mostly because it’s my half-day at work and because I get to sleep in the next day. Woot!

I know what it’s like to be tired, and I also know what it’s like to be soul-weary, where all the sleep in the world does no good. Soul-weary looks like going through the motions because you’ve lost all hope and can’t see things getting any better.

I love that Jesus offers those people an invitation. Come to me, all you who are soul-weary and overworked, He says, and I will give you rest for your soul. Not just physical rest, but soul-rest.

Oh, and Jesus promises to work everything for our good. That means things will get better, and so will you.

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what” (Atticus Finch).

Periodically, I get the urge to read a book I’ve read before. This time, it’s To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve read this book, but it’s probably at least twice. I always seem to forget how much of the book got left out of the movie (although that particular movie is still one of my favorites).

Whenever I read dialogue in the book, I hear the people from the movie. Especially when I read Atticus Finch, I hear Gregory Peck. I even hear the two kids from the movie when I read Jem and Scout’s lines.

I’ll probably end up watching the movie again after I’m done with the book. For some reason, I always feel compelled to watch it in the fall.

If you made it all the way through high school without reading this classic, I’d suggest you read it. Pronto. If I could only write one book (as Harper Lee did), I think this would be the one I’d want to write.

I’m as guilty as anyone of bemoaning Mondays and talking about how glad I am that Mondays only last 24 hours and only take up 1/7 of the week.

But I do think Mondays get a bad rap. And a lot of it is just self-fulfilling prophecy, like where if you think long and hard enough that you’re going to have a bad day, you probably will.

I get that Monday signals the end of the weekend. I also get that Monday means back to work, back to school, back to the humdrum routine.

But Monday also means another chance to draw breath, to open your eyes and see this beautiful creation. Seeing Monday means you’re alive. And to me, that’s a good thing.

Normally, I meet my friend on Monday and we go hiking in Radnor Lake State Park. That’s one part of my Monday I always look forward to. And what if Christmas falls on a Monday? Am I going to have to hate Christmas then?

I think that if you want to change your life, you have to change your mind. Change your way of thinking from focusing on negatives and “can’t”s to positives and “I can”s.

So I like Mondays. I like rainy days. I even like hot humid days (in very small doses). Because that means God woke me up and I was alive to see them.

This beautifully expresses the depth of loss and grief that C. S. Lewis felt when his wife died. I love the brutal honesty and transparency here:

“Joy died at 10 o’clock last night in the [hospital]. I was alone with her at the moment, but she was not conscious. I had never seen the moment of natural death before. It was far less dreadful than I had expected—indeed there’s nothing to it. Pray for her soul. I have prayed twice daily of late for us four together—you and Margy and me and Joy. I shall continue for you two.

I can’t understand my loss yet and hardly (except for brief but terrible moments) feel more than a kind of bewilderment, almost a psychological paralysis. A bit like the first moments after being hit by a shell.

I’d like to meet. Perhaps I could come up to town some day when you are in town and take you to lunch at the Athenaeum. For I am—oh God that I were not—very free now. One doesn’t realise in early life that the price of freedom is loneliness. To be happy one must be tied. God bless all three of us.”

“Autumn…the year’s last, loveliest smile” (William Cullen Bryant).

“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost” (Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cezann).

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn–that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness–that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling” (Jane Austen, Persuasion).

I realize that it’s not officially Autumn until September 22 at 10:29 EDT (according to a website I found via Google). But it sure felt like it today.

It wasn’t cold or chilly, at least by my standards, but it was definitely cooler and there was an aroma of Autumn in the air. I’ve always thought that each season has a distinct odor to it.

I don’t know why Fall makes me nostalgic or why it conjures up so many childhood memories for me. It also reminds me of all those I’ve loved who aren’t here anymore.

I did my pilgrimage to Franklin where I had my Bangers and Mash at McCreary’s Irish Pub, sat outside of Frothy Monkey with my coffee-nated beverage and my Jan Karon book, and walked around in the almost-Autumnal air. It was lovely.

I hope there are hayrides and bonfires and pumpkin spice beverages in my future. Maybe even a corn maze. I hope there are plenty of brisk days where I can make good use of my flannel shirts and light jackets.

Thank you, God, for the quiet of Autumn and the reminder that after every Autumn and Winter there comes a Spring.

I read this earlier and thought it was spot-on, as Mr. Lewis himself might have put it:

“I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in ‘the High Countries’. In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is everything and Heaven everywhere. But we, at this end of the road, must not try to anticipate that retrospective vision. If we do, we are likely to embrace the false and disastrous converse and fancy that everything is good and everywhere is Heaven.

But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself” (C. S. Lewis).

Yep. What he said.