Seasons Are For Change
I’m a few days late, but it’s finally spring and I couldn’t be more excited! Spring is the season of new beginnings. Days are longer, nights are warmer, and things that were once dormant and dead bloom back to life in vibrant color.
Like nature we too experience seasons. There are times in our lives that are filled with warmth, comfort and fun much like summers and times that feel cold like winters due to the loss of a relationship, loved one, or job, or a feeling of loneliness and isolation.
For me spring represents a much needed time of joyful change. I’ve been in a winter season for the last 8 months and I’m ready for some much needed sunshine. As painful as this last year has been, and as much as I’m ready for it to be a distant memory, I realize this season was necessary in refining my character and relationship with God in ways nothing else could have.
In the beginning, all I did was question God and wonder why He would allow me to go through what seemed like such an unbearable amount of pain. Eventually, as God always does in His time, He answered me.
He reminded me that He is in control and sees the bigger picture. Psalm 139 says this,
You have searched me, Lord,and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise;you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down;you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely... All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. - Psalm 139: 1-4, 16 NIV
God showed me that He knows everything about me including each and every thought and decision. There is no challenge or temptation in my life that God didn’t know about well in advance.
Unbeknown to me, I needed a spiritual detoxing. After all, Hindsight is 20/20 and looking back I can see that I was veering off course and needed to be re-directed. For me that looked like quitting my job and moving back home after two years of living on my own. It was a painful and upsetting, but throughout that period I drew closer to God because after losing my job and moving away from my friends He was all I had.
And you know what? He proved to be enough. I learned so much about God’s character and my own. Now I look back at that period of time that I despised so much with complete gratitude.
In my wintery season old habits and desires died making way for new wisdom, strength, and joy to blossom in me. I will embark on this new season of my life with deeper faith and confidence in God, and a sense of love I hadn’t known before.
There will always be winters, springs, summers, and falls in our lives. In some years winters will be long and in other years they will be short, but they will be vital in shaping you into the person God created you to be. Know that you are being prepared for your own season of newness- new joy, new hope, new adventures, and a new and deeper level of faith in God.
- No matter what season of your life you’re in I encourage you to embrace it and let it mature and change you for the better. I’d love to hear from you! What season of life are you in and what is it that you’ve learned or are still learning?
