S8 E7: Life Is Seasons
We are officially welcoming the season of Autumn this weekend
I love the correlation between the natural seasons and the seasons of life.
I’m pretty sure that most of us have a preference as to which natural season is our favorite. I’ve always thought about and talked a lot about seasons but creating this seasonal journal this past year it has me diving even a little deeper.
And some of that deeper has come from the feedback I’ve received from some of you as you’ve walked through the seasonal journal. I’ve heard from several of you how you have experienced a season this year that wasn’t a season you particularly love and you found yourself walking through it differently as you intentionally allowed yourself to be present in it. You intentionally showed up differently looking for the beauty of the season…and were pleasantly surprised to find it.
So that got me thinking…
How do my pre-conceived thoughts and expectations of a season influence how I experience them? Well you know I talk about how we can tend to live life on autopilot so I definitely know the answer to that question of how my pre-conceived thoughts and expectations of a season influence how I experience a particular season.
But as we all know just because we might know something in our brain to be a fact… doesn’t mean that we live that truth out fully…our goal is to get there but we all know we fall short in this…because we are human but always hopefully learning and growing.
So I started thinking about this and how I have certain thoughts and expectations around certain seasons in the year. And I can see that those seasons typically fall right in line with what I am expecting and looking to get out of it. For example, my family spends way more time together in the Fall and Winter seasons. And when I look at that it’s not because everyone's schedules suddenly open up (things change a little for some but nothing drastic) what changes in the intention that goes into planning to make sure we are making the space in our schedules to hang out and celebrate and experience birthdays and seasonal traditions we have created in our family. We are purposeful in planning for the season.
Now does that mean everything planned turns out perfectly?!?
Absolutely not!
We’ve had a virus postpone parties and car problems that have had us sleeping in a hotel off and exit on our way to family in another state and work schedules haven’t lined up as we hoped for…
Life happens and when it does. It changes plans.
But if there is never a plan in place then more than likely what you would like to happen isn’t going to…
So I’ve been taking a deeper look as I’m entering new seasons and looking deeper into what I am expecting. Knowing life will be life and bring the unexpected but I can set my heart and mind on that which I can control. And trust God with each and every moment.
So maybe this Autumn season we are heading into is your favorite and you are filled with anticipation for all that this season will bring…or maybe you hate the sight of bare trees and cooler temps…and you are personally dealing with some things in this season that are really hard and simply trying to make it through each day.
I have found that the more I resist a season the more painful it is. The harder I try to avoid it the more pain I experience.
There is something supernatural about the word surrender. That we don’t always want to hear…
Surrendering our seasons to God might feel hard but it’s much harder to hold on and resist surrendering it all.
My prayer today is that no matter where you find yourself in this moment you will fully step into this new season fully surrendering to the one who holds ALL of our seasons in his hand.
Happy Autumn friend
