Autumn Salad: A Wayfarer's Lesson in Letting Go

Autumn Salad: A Wayfarer's Lesson in Letting Go

October 2016 found our family in a remote Himalayan village in northern India, where I'd been assigned to coordinate winter relief efforts. The landscape blazed with autumn glory-golden maples, crimson oaks, and amber fields ready for harvest. Yet beneath the beauty, anxiety gripped the community. Winter's harshness would soon descend, and this year's harvest would determine who survived.

Sarah had fallen ill with altitude sickness, and our children, Caleb and Ethan, were struggling with the isolation. I felt like a failure, unable to help my wife, comfort my children, or adequately prepare the village for the brutal months ahead.

One evening, an elderly village woman named Devi invited us to her home. Her husband had died the previous winter, and she lived alone in a stone cottage surrounded by a magnificent garden. Despite her loss and scanty resources, she welcomed us with a feast centred around an autumn salad unlike anything I'd ever seen.

Roasted butternut squash, still warm from her clay oven. Kale from her garden, massaged tender with oil. Dried cranberries she'd preserved. Walnuts from her single tree. Sliced apples, their sweetness concentrated by cool nights. She'd even found pomegranate seeds, something very rare and precious at that altitude.

As we ate, Devi spoke through our translator. "This salad is my thanksgiving. Each ingredient tells a story of letting go."

She held up a piece of squash. "The vine released this to me. It could have held on, but it knew, only in releasing can there be harvest."

Then a walnut. "The tree let go of these gifts. They fell, and I gathered them. If the tree clutched its fruit, both tree and fruit would die."

Her weathered hands lifted an apple slice. "The branch released this. And look," she pointed to her window, where we could see her bare apple tree against the sunset. "The tree looks dead now, doesn't it? Naked. Vulnerable. But it's not dead, it’s trusting. It let go so it can survive winter and bloom again."

Ethan, our younger lad usually quiet, asked, "Doesn't the tree miss its apples?"

Devi smiled, tears glistening. "Perhaps. Like I miss my husband. But missing something and being destroyed by its absence are different things. The tree grieves its fruit but trusts the rhythm. Autumn teaches us-we must release what we love so that life can continue."

She looked at Sarah, still pale and weak. "You are afraid," Devi said gently. "You clutch your plans, your health, your control. But autumn says: let go. Trust the One who creates seasons."

That night, 1 Thessalonians 5:18 echoed in my spirit: "Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Not give thanks for all circumstances, but in them. Even in the season of letting go.

Devi's autumn salad became our family's tradition. Every fall, Sarah roasts butternut squash and tosses it with kale, cranberries, and walnuts. We call it our "Letting Go Salad."

Because autumn's spiritual lesson is profound: gratitude isn't just for abundance, it's for the wisdom of seasons. The falling leaves aren't dying in vain; they're feeding the soil for spring's renewal. The harvested squash isn't the garden's end; it's provision that sustains through winter. I recall my childhood when the caretake at my grandpa’s home would harvest all the squash and store them in the underground basement cellar to be utilised during the winter months for days when there was no other seasonal vegetable. The bare branches of the apple tree or as a matter of fact any tree aren't abandoned; they're resting in trust.

Autumn salads, with their rich, warming ingredients, teach us that even in seasons of release-releasing health, dreams, loved ones, certainty, we can still gather gratitude. We can still feast. We can still trust that the God who designed autumn's letting go also designed spring's return.

Years later, I learned that Devi passed away the following winter. But her garden? It bloomed magnificently that next spring, tended by village children she'd taught to plant, to harvest, and to let go.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens... a time to plant and a time to uproot" (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2). And in every season, even autumn's release, there is provision for gratitude.