12
Autumn in Texas arrives without warning; unannounced, but
welcome all the same. This time of year has long been my favorite.
Not only because of the beauty of turning leaves or the long-
awaited respite from a heat-scorched summer that the eventual
cooler air brings, but also because fall has a way of prompting us
to take stock of our year before it’s over. Whether it’s intentional
or not, in the fall we start to shore up our footing as we enter the
final months of the year. There’s a quiet confidence to this season
that, year after year, harvests the promises it made in spring. Fall
reminds us how much of its beauty wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for
the many months of preparation that came before—the rising of
spring and the growth of summer—that it requires to provide
the abundance we experience during these next few months.
How essential each season is to the rhythm of nature is a lesson
in wholeness that I gratefully receive.
This story that the seasons tell inspired our team’s curiosity
about what wholeness means for us. During a few early
conversations around the office, I noticed that the word whole
led some people to associate the idea of wholeness with a flawless
state of being—unmarked, without a blemish or crack of any
kind. In a word: perfect. As I thought this over, I could see where
the threads that weave this kind of perception might begin. I
think our culture has made it natural to perceive our identity
from a place of lack instead of a place of abundance. It’s not
uncommon for us to evaluate who we are based on all that we’re
not, or not-yet. But it’s actually through the lens of wholeness
that I think we can glean the clarity necessary to see ourselves
as all that we already are. To me, there’s a grace woven into the
very fabric of wholeness that invites us to live in the abundance of
our story. That every piece of our identity—the broken, the sad,
the hard, just as much as the fulfilled, the good, the happy—is
stitched together to make us complete.
Inviting into our lives the entire palette of human emotion
isn’t always easy. Somewhere along the road to adulthood, it felt
simpler to leave behind a willingness to allow sadness to wash
over us, to sit in grief, to invite disappointment to linger while
we contemplate where it’s really coming from. In its place, many
of us picked up a resistance to shield anything that might make
us feel less than happy. I don’t want it to come across like I don’t
believe in happiness, because I do, but when it becomes the sole
pursuit of our daily lives, I can’t help but wonder what we might
be missing out on in the process—the potential to learn more,
through our failures, through our sadness and grief, about who
we are and all that we can offer this world. It seems to me that we
can go through life taking half steps and in held breath or we can
lean into the fullness of who we were made to be, for better or
worse. That’s a life lived in pursuit of wholeness, and that’s what
we’re celebrating in this issue.
On page 32 we debunk the idea that wholeness somehow
equates to perfection with a humorous take on all of the expected
to-dos that we set out to accomplish on a daily basis and how
entirely unfounded it is to place those kind of expectations on
ourselves and our time. The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi
encourages us to embrace all that is perfectly imperfect in the
design and decoration of our homes on page 70.
Whether this year has left you feeling fractured or torn and in
need of being stitched back together (we share powerful stories
of restoration on page 78) or you’re living out this season with
a background of plenty, I hope you’re able to see that all of life
is neither completely merry nor completely tragic—that there
are joyful seasons and heartbreaking seasons, and also mundane
seasons, and that to be whole is to embrace every one of them.
As summer fades into autumn and you begin to take stock of
yet another year of life lived, I hope you’re able to see that the
tapestry of your own life is made infinitely more beautiful by the
story of each season.Love,JOANNA GAINES
follow along on instagram: @JOANNAGAINESletter from the editor