I’m trying to grasp the concept of seasons.
You can imagine the challenge this is for a Florida girl. I grew up reading children’s books that showed leaves changing color in the fall and snow flurries in the winter. Lies, all lies, I thought. Then I visited my grandparents in Kentucky, went skiing in Colorado and went to college in Alabama. Seasons can be beautiful things.
Everything in this life goes through seasons. Relationships, churches, jobs, hobbies, interests. Some seasons are good, some are bad. Some you relish and try to hold on to (when your kids are in a cute phase, when you’re enjoying your job, when your marriage is easy). Some you grind through and try to get out of them as quickly as possible (when your baby isn’t sleeping through the night, a struggling friendship, algebra).
Sometimes the end of a season can signal the end of that part of your life. And in good seasons, this does not sit well with me.
As I’ve said before, I don’t let go easily, even when I should. I used to see it as loyalty, strength, courage. And on my better days that certainly can be the case.
But more often than not, my codependency flares up and I just keep holding on, letting whatever is now ‘out of season’ for me beat my heart into a pulp until God mercifully steps in and destroys the thing.
At that point I’m free (albeit barely breathing), but I’ve missed my chance at a healthy break and walking away with my heart intact. And then I end up wasting a lot of time healing from wounds that should never have happened.
I am determined to master this before I die. Or before it kills me.
Then there’s the other extreme. Younger generations are getting a bad reputation for being shockingly non-committal. All plans are tentative. All relationships are expendable. All jobs are temporary. Options are left open in case of a better offer.
While there are great benefits to rolling with the punches, there is a rising lack of integrity in the inability or unwillingness to commit. There’s flexible, and then there’s flakey.
When change happens to me, I usually try to hang out in denial (which I can make a complete season of) or fight and whine and double down on the dying season, trying to revive it at all costs.
Margaret Feinberg passed on a powerful mantra to me in her book Fight Back with Joy (read it). As she discusses her battle with cancer she simplifies the prescription for contentment: accept, adapt, depend.
Accept that things will never be the way they were.
Adapt your life to the new normal.
Depend on God for everything in the process.
For me, that first step is the hardest hump to get over. Life changed. Again. Accept the change. Accept it, then adapt to it and keep living.
I was trying to figure out why the concept of seasons is so hard for me. For some reason, every commitment I make carries an implicit forever with it.
A little dramatic? Maybe. Or maybe that’s exactly what we were created for. Maybe we all desire to unreservedly give our lives to something forever.
Here’s my theory: Even before sin found it’s way into our genetics with that one bite of forbidden fruit, another code was branded into our DNA by God Himself. Forever. We were made for forever.
In the middle of the Garden where God placed Adam and Eve, there were two trees: The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God instructs Adam to eat from any tree in the Garden EXCEPT the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, meaning the tree of life was fair game.
The tree of life gave life without death to whoever ate of its fruit. Adam and Eve didn’t need the moral discernment from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They had God for that. Eating THAT fruit was an act of defiant independence and lack of trust in God.
We all know what happens. Satan convinces Eve to not trust God. She eats the fruit and she gives some to Adam (who was WITH her, 3:6). They realize they’re naked and freak out (a fairly common response, I would say). Then God shows up and lays out the consequences and curses.
Genesis 3:22: “And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” So everybody gets evicted from the Garden and a big scary angel is assigned to guard the way to the tree of life.
You know what that says to me? We were hardwired, before everything got messed up, for forever.
People say a lot of stupid things when someone dies.
“He’s in a better place.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“God won’t give you anything you can’t handle.”
“Death is a natural part of life.”
The first three may be true, but they’re NOT what a grieving loved one wants to hear. The fourth is a total lie, completely unbiblical and makes me want to pull my hair out. But the last one bothers me on a deep level.
We were never meant to taste death. Even after all these generations since Adam and Eve, there is an innate pull against death in every fiber of our beings. That’s why we fight it so hard. Death is the most unnatural part of life.
To be sure, that’s the way things are now. And we should accept, adapt and depend on God as we struggle with these mortal limitations. And for Christians, death is not something to be feared because we know what happens on the other side. (Oh, take me Home, Lord.)
All that to say, I think that’s why we so desperately long for forever. And the truth is, I just won’t get it in this life. We’ve got to die before we get to forever.
So while we’re here, God gave us seasons.
Thanks to songwriter Pete Seeger and The Byrds, Ecclesiastes 3 is one of the most well-known chunks of scripture. The NIV says it this way:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
According to this passage, uprooting, tearing down, not embracing, giving up and throwing away are all legitimate seasons of this life. A time for holding on and a time for letting go.
And only a few verses later, Solomon addresses our forever tendencies: “…He has also set eternity in the hearts of men…”
So while I attempt to accept, adapt and depend on God through the seasons of this life, I am justified in longing for the permanence of the next.
That longing is in all of us, but we will never have it satisfied here. Give yourself permission to live in seasons. Forever no longer has a place in this world. But while we’re here, we can use these seasons to our advantage.
God has set them up according to His purpose. If we keep our hands open to what He gives and takes away, we can travel light through our journey, accept the ever-changing landscape, adapt, and always, always depend on God.
So stop and take note of the season you’re in. Maybe you’re in a good place, feeling fairly content. Maybe you’re in a bad place, scratching and clawing for the next season. I’ve got good news and bad news: Whatever season this is for you, it won’t last.
Stay present in this phase of life. Soak up every lesson God has for you in it before it changes.
When Caroline was two, we were in a season of drastic change. We were driving around one day and the good ole Caedmon’s Call song Shifting Sand came on. I absent-mindedly began to sing along with it. My faith is like shifting sand, changed by every wave. My faith is like shifting sand, so I stand on grace.
Somewhere after the second chorus, my itty-bitty kid interrupts me with this (I’m not even kidding):
“Hey, Mommy? ‘Standing on grace’ means that God doesn’t change even when everything else does.”
My jaw dropped. What the…? I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She stared back at me, quite serious, waiting for my response.
I blinked back tears and tried to collect myself. “That’s right, kiddo. That’s absolutely right.”
And that’s the rest of the good news: God doesn’t change even when everything else does. And that’s the one object of permanence He lets us keep when all the other forevers fail: Himself.
So let our unchanging God minister to the part of you that hungers for forever. Hold on tight to Him and try to release everything else to come and go in this life.
And remember that someday we’ll be able to fully embrace forever and never have to let go.
