Dead Leaves

Fall is my favorite season. I love the vivid colors of the changing leaves (especially the red).... it's like they want to make a bang before they shrivel up and die.
One of my least favorite times of the year is when every leaf has fallen to the ground.... shrivelled, brown, lifeless and ugly. They spread all over the lawn, littering the ground with brown death... and the task of raking is inevitable. I was given the privilege to rake the yard today (can you sense my sarcasm?)... but as I did, I thought about how dead the leaves are... and how lifeless and useless they are. They're not pretty to look at, they're not helping anything (they're actually killing the grass), and looking at their dull coloration, it's hard to remember the beauty they once had.
But as I was raking the leaves of death, I started comparing them to people... leaves don't have a choice about losing their color and dying. Neither do we.... physically, that is. As people, however, we can control whether we let our joy, our enthusiasm, how loving we are, how we treat others, etc. I guess basically I'm comparing mean grumpy people to dead leaves... which sounds really mean now that I actually write it down... but I was just thinking about it. There are many things that we can't control in life... but we can ALWAYS control our reactions. (I was reminded of that because of the people I was raking with...)
I was also comparing dead leaves to our spiritual lives... ok dead leaves are dead... that's obvious.... but they're still leaves. Sometimes I guess we (maybe I should just say I) feel spiritually dead... but I'm still a Christian. I don't know I guess it's just the same distinction and idea as the first one, but we have the choice of how alive we are.... well to a certain extent... you know what I mean. I guess maybe I need to think about this a little more before I attempt to put it into words. Haha it made sense in my mind.