I have only to look out the window to witness the drastic change of seasons. Tree limbs reach like bare hands toward a gray clouded sky. Crisp leaves sprawl across the cold ground like a patchwork quilt. Autumn has come and is quickly fading as winter begins to make its entrance. The weather channel says 2-5 inches of snow tonight. I still am trying to decide how I want to react to that. If I was nine, I’d be elated. I’d be scurrying around for my Christmas tree. A stickler for tradition, I would make sure my sisters and I had pulled out our miniature artificial balsams with their multi-colored lights and globs of past years tinsel. We each had one that we always used to pull out of the attic for the first day of snow. Now the adult in me considers how long the winters linger here, and how dark the mornings can get. See how optimistic I am!
I search the internet for that need of childlike wonder that Frederick Buechner so articulately frames:
You wake upon a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in last fall. All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls. The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence. It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up. It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever knew or dreamed.
I share all this because the concept of seasons has been a contemplation of mine lately. I’m not talking about just the physical change in weather and foliage. I’ve been thinking about the seasons of life we enter. There’s certainly more than four. Relationships, health, finances, government, even spiritual and emotional seasons, are just a few that greet us at the windows of our daily lives. And if you’re like me, you can easily lose that child-like optimism to face them and find something to marvel in them. Instead, some seasons frighten us; so we leave the blinds pulled down.
To some degree we all have been there. I know what it feels like to lay on your bed and not want to get up. To feel like all you can do is linger in that fetal position. To panic at the little insecurities, and failures, and uncertainties. They loom large in the mind. I’ve been there with you on the bedroom floor in the dark when winter seems too long and spring is a distant dream.
What happened to the child in us? Remember when our fears were a little more quiet and wonder sang out loud?
Sometimes we sigh at the seasons. We groan at our waking up and simply try to make it through another day. We count down till summer. We’re so eager to rush past these days that are in fact, a gift. We miss so much.
Here’s what I’m learning–My biggest desire is to know the One who calls me His own. And the season of life He calls me to is my opportunity to learn more about Him in a particular way that only I can in that particular season. What a gift!
This life is all about knowing Jesus. Let me just say, be encouraged! Don’t let difficult circumstances become a means of depression, or fear, or even dissatisfaction. Be a child again. Join in the wonder of even the simplest of gifts found there, like a single leaf you’re ready to press in wax paper. Go out looking for them.
Seize the seasons. Make the most of them. Take them up like a book in your hands. These are the chapters that you don’t want to put down because they will tell you more about the One you’re going to meet someday. These are the chapters that read another aspect of His character that maybe you haven’t seen before. When you turn that final page, you’ll find the author standing before you; and you’ll be all the more glad you didn’t put that book down.
Maybe even today, we can boldly come to Him with the specific needs of the season we’re in, and watch how gracious and particular His response is to each of us. Let’s ask God what He wants us to know about Himself that we have been blinded to in the past. Lately, I’ve been experiencing just how trustworthy He is. He is Lord and I am not. Seems simple as I type it out here. But it’s sinking deeper in this heart, teaching me to whisper thank you for the seasons He brings my way. There’s beauty at the approach of winter and the remembrance of the season to follow.
Just This. 