I’m mad right now. Summer has very clearly turned to fall and, to be honest, I’m not pleased about it one bit. We’ve had a fairly cool summer here in Oregon so I feel like I got cheated out of the season a little. There are still so many summery things I want to do. My husband and I still haven’t made it on this one hiking trail I’ve literally wanted to go on for a year. I wanted to pick more berries and go to the beach and do so many other summer activities.
Alas, fall is here and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Instead of regretting picking berries, it’s time to think about apple picking and pumpkin patches and football. The season has changed and I need to be thankful for the beauties and joys of this season rather than lamenting the things I didn’t get to in the last.
Seasons: God’s Beautiful Plan
That’s the hard thing about seasons. It doesn’t matter how I feel about the summer, I can’t make it last any longer. Sadly, it also doesn’t matter how I feel about the impending winter, I can’t make it end any earlier. Personally, I would prefer winter to basically only last for the month of December (for Christmas) and then turn right to spring starting January 15th or so.
But, alas, that is not how the world works. God actually created a beautiful system of seasons. Each one has its own beauties. Each has its own trials. None of them last forever, though many of them last longer than we’d like them to (here’s looking at you winter).
Life Seasons: The Message of Ecclesiastes
The same thing is true in our lives. That’s one of the messages of the book of Ecclesiastes. Chapter 3 says that to everything (turn, turn turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn) and a time to every purpose under heaven (thank the Byrds for the turns and the soundtrack to the movie Forest Gump for getting that song stuck in my head whenever I read this passage).
God makes each piece of our life to be a season. Some are longer than we want. Others we wish would last forever, but they never do. The one thing we can always count on when it comes to our life seasons is that they will change.
That might sound like good news to you right now. Maybe it even sounds too good to be true. I know I’ve had periods of my life (see last week’s blog post) where I’ve felt like the season that I’m in is never going to change. The truth is that it did change, just like every other life season has and will.
Each Season Has Its Beauty, Don’t Miss It!
Even more surprising to me than the change was the fact that there are things that I miss about that hard season. Just like the seasons of our year, every season of our lives has its own beauties and its own trials. Often we don’t recognize the beauty until after the season has already come and gone. That why gratitude is so important in every season.
I miss living with my family and being closer to them. To gain the thing that I wanted (getting married), required that I move away from them. I miss the people at my old job that I left behind. Sure, that job wasn’t anything I wanted to be doing forever, but the people I worked with were great. I miss the Bible Study Fellowship class I was in and being known by that group. I also miss the season of friendship with my friend Brad and his wife, Amy. In some ways, my post-college years of singleness were really great. I just didn’t see much of the greatness until it had passed. Please learn from my mistakes.
Enjoy Each Season Because It Won’t Last
The message of the book of Ecclesiastes (even beyond chapter 3 and the Byrds’ song) is that nothing is sure in this life except for change. That means that we should do our very best to enjoy each season as it comes, knowing that it won’t be here for long. That’s what it means to be grateful. Even with the hard seasons we want to be over, we can try our best to find the bits of beauty that God has hidden for us.
I didn’t do a great job of this in my season of singleness. I didn’t see many of the gifts of that season until they were gone. In fact, I resented some of those things instead of seeing them as gifts. For example, I was not happy that I was living with my parents at the time, but I’m now very grateful I had that season at home before I literally moved to the other side of the country. That season was a gift that I should have been grateful for at the time.
Learn to Savor the Season
I did learn though. The truth is, each season includes gifts of God’s grace, things he gives us that we don’t deserve, like that precious time with my family. There are some seasons when those gifts are obvious. Other seasons’ grace gifts are harder to find, though they are still there. Gratitude and searching for those gifts is one of the ways we can appreciate all our seasons, even the not so fun ones.
Maybe because that change of season happened so swiftly and included so many big changes, I honestly think I’ve done a much better job of savoring seasonal things since then. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Seminary. Sure, it was hard work, but I knew it would pass quickly. I appreciated the friends I made and all the things I was learned. I wanted to be in a house of our own for quite some time, but I loved our little rented townhouse and worked to make it a happy little home. Am I doing my “dream job” right now? Not exactly (granted, I’m not entirely sure what my “dream job” would be), but I love what I’m doing even though I still dream of more.
The Meaning of Gratitude
That’s what gratitude is all about. It’s not putting a smiley face on and pretending your pain and disappointment isn’t there. Instead, it’s about finding the little gifts of God in everyday moments, even the ones in the midst of pain and disappointment. It’s not taking for granted any good gift, no matter how small. You don’t have to pretend you’re “living the dream” to be grateful. You just have to accept every small joy as a gift. It’s easy to think about, but hard to actually do.
So what type of season are you in right now? Are you dying for it to be over or hoping it lasts forever? Either way, look to find all the gifts of grace that God is giving you right now. They might be small and you might have to think about them really hard to find them, but they are there. Those are the things you will miss in the next season, so make the most of them before they pass.
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash