SEASONS
There’s a regularity to the changing of seasons. But in life, those changes are really really hard.
I am grateful to live in a part of the country that experiences at least 3, and usually all 4 seasons. In the southeast, near the coast of the Atlantic Ocean where I live, we have hot humid summers (which I really do love, except when my car AC is broken like it is now), we have crisp chilly autumns with the occasional late year warm up… we get a pretty cold winter, although not too terribly long… then an early spring warm up with just enough sunshine and low humidity to call spring-time “perfect”.
There is something wonderful about each season that in its time, the other seasons don’t afford you. And in some parts of the country or the world, where there is only 1 or two seasons… well, that just sounds boring.
I think my favorite is spring time. Because we have to take the bad with the good, I put up with the dusting of pollen on every single surface which are coated in a fine yellowish powder, only to have the occasional rain shower that doesn’t quite wash it all away, but really just turns it into a muck or a goo. That part sucks, as my allergies and dependence on allergy meds will attest. But everything else is amazing!
The air has warmed up enough to lose the jacket and to roll the windows down. I can be outside without having to prepare by layering up. The bird that calls my backyard home only for 2 months in the spring time is singing away while I have my morning coffee every single day (but strangely is gone during the rest of the year…). There is more daylight in the evenings to enjoy being outside.
But the other thing I love about spring is newness. I love the blossoming and budding of trees and flowers. The life that was dormant inside the fibrous trunks of trees and the the delicate leaves of azaleas is just waiting to explode with new life and expressions of beauty and grace. I love the potential that lies inside a small bud of a japanese maple or a bradford pear or a tiger eye tulip. It knows that the time to live is now, and it’s poised… ready to spring to life on cue.
My life has gone through a changing of seasons recently.
After doing the same job in the same church for nearly 20 years, we felt a sense and a leading to lay it down and to step away. To enter into a new season. To walk willingly into our winter. I know what to expect from our physical seasons, but unlike winter or summer, I don’t really know what to expect for this season of life. I don’t really know how to prepare. What I do know is that life is still bubbling with potential. That the keeper of the seasons, and the Author of my story is preparing me for that next season. Preparing us by giving us rest. By sending us comfort. By holding us tightly and keeping us close to him. My humanity wants to fight it, to step out and bloom in the middle of winter… but winter is a time to rest and shed the old. Spring will come in time. Newness will once again cause beauty to bloom. There will be a reason to sing. There IS a reason to sing, but the song today is sung in the quiet hold of our Master Gardener’s hands. All I can do is wait… and rest… and be.
I love the writing of Nicole Nordeman. About the same time that my season of life changed the last time (20 years ago), she wrote the song, “Every Season”, and I love the last few lines of the song.
