Each and every October/Novemberish after the time change, I feel winter set in with its cloak of darkness. It happens so fast and it catches me off guard every. single. time. It’s only 4:30pm, how can it feel like midnight?! I spend days, even weeks wishing it were spring. I feel the need to ditch this premature middle-of-the-night feeling and enjoy the bike-riding-til-8:00pm feeling instead. I have a lot of trouble accepting the season.
How true is this same analogy with the seasons of life that we journey through? When I find myself elbow-deep in the sink with dishes that never end or at Kroger making a scene because I won’t let my 4 year-old eat a grape that she found on the floor, I tend to be fully aware of the season that I’m currently in. I notice the college student buying yogurt. She’s buying yogurt all by herself without a little person telling her they hate that kind or that they want M&Ms instead.
She is in a different season.
Or maybe I notice the mom with older children. She can leave her younger kids with the older while she and the husband go on a date. Built-in babysitters. A different season.
Then there’s the friend who has this great job making a impact in the community and doing what she loves. Oh how I wish I were there. But that’s not my season. That’s her’s.
Just as winter turns to spring, the landscape of our circumstances change. The stark darkness of our night duty with baby transition to sleeping like a baby. Seasons of struggle become the very moments that our hearts will long for. Not because of the things we struggle with, but because of how we can look back and see the good within them. Each one hand-picked by the Creator for us to experience. He will never put us into a place that we are not meant to be.
The Bible says,
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.. – Ecclesiastes 3:1
If you’re familiar with this scripture, then you know that it goes into a long list of things that have a specific time. The good and the bad. Like the scenes at Kroger and the potty training victories. The trips to the store to buy yogurt alone and the times when the crew drags along with you.
It also says,
He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. – Acts 1:7
Let’s embrace the place where God has us. Let’s find the purpose in our season. Right. Now.
If we are busy focusing our sights on where we aren’t, how can we truly be present where we are? What is in front of you right now that you might be missing?
Sister, nothing brings greater joy than contentment. Seasons are temporary. As fleeting as the wind.
Accept the season. Whatever it may be. Know that Jesus Christ works in the mundane and the messy. He makes all things new and reveals His purpose if you just take joy in the season that you are in.