It seems to be a season of need.

We’re between the blood drives of summer, and people’s remembering of need as the holidays approach. The local food shelf campaign is mid-season, as is the Giving Campaign through employers and directly the winter clothing drive for the United Way. Families are planning their holiday travels, how to balance seeing family and friends in the short time gaps they have around work (and hoping an ice storm doesn’t throw a wrench in those plans).

And yet in nature, we’re just wrapping up a season of plenty, squash and pumpkins still abound even if the berries and fruits are wrapping up. The leaves are falling, and in that brief space between leaf fall and snow fall we have to clean the gutters and rake the (in our case, lots and lots of) leaves. The weekend before, we had done yard work for others, helping cut and drag brush, move leaves, and plant 100 crocus bulbs for spring. This weekend, I got to teach a neighbor girl, about age 7, how to rake leaves effectively, load them onto a tarp, and drag them over to a leaf pile. She’d come over to see what we were up to. When my kids explained that we were raking leaves, but that the leaf pile wasn’t for jumping into until the leaf raking was done (yep, teaching the kiddos you have to work first for your later rewards), neighbor girl was willing to help for an opportunity to participate in the leaf pile jumping too.

On Friday on my way home from work, I ran into someone whose service job caused me to chat with them multiple times a week, for several years, about a decade ago. Circumstances changed, and I hadn’t hardly run into him since that time, just enough to wave from a distance about every 6 months. When I saw him on Friday in a new job, with an opportunity to do more than just wave, of course I stopped to say hi and catch up. It turned out he had just lost his wife 6 weeks ago due to cancer, much more rapidly than they had expected, and right after he had taken this new job. He expounded on his grief for 5 minutes, and then seemed chagrined, and tried to take back all the emotion when he said “oh, but you just asked me how I was doing, and I dumped all of this on you.” Of course from his story I had tears streaming down my face, but fortunately this time I hadn’t lost my voice to my tears, so I was able to respond with what was in my heart. “I asked how you were doing, and this is what you are dealing with, it’s okay”. But how many of us don’t have the time or emotional energy, or even interest, in really meaning the “how are you?” that we ask?

It’s not just this season. It seems we live in a perpetual season of need. There’s always someone who has just lost a wife, a mother, or has a grandbaby in the NICU. There’s always someone who has been yelled at at work, for having to be the bearer of bad news. Someone has standing water in their finished basement. Someone is moving a house full of stuff. Someone’s computer isn’t behaving, but work still has to get done. Someone suffering their 3rd migraine of the week. Someone with an otherwise healthy but octogenarian mother suddenly in nursing care due to an accident. Someone who is emotionally turbulent because they can’t get enough sleep. Someone who is hungry – not even the deep persistent hungry, “just” the hangry type of hungry. Schools and nonprofits need volunteers. These all directly or indirectly touched my life in the last month – many of them in the past week.

I hope your life always has enough margin for yourself that it also has enough margin for others – that you can spare some time, energy, food, money, education, compassion, and/or blood to help make the world a better place. May you always be in a season of at least enough to share.