Embracing the Season
What is your favourite season?
October is here, and can’t you just suddenly feel the changing of the season in the air?
But I wonder, how do you actually feel about this coming season? Perhaps you are more than ready for a change, or maybe you just aren’t quite ready for the summer to be over just yet…?
I know that lots of people love this time of year, but if I’m honest I often struggle with the approaching of fall.
I am more of a summer person, you see. I just love the sociability that the warmer weather brings; the BBQs, beer gardens, beach trips, and picnics… the way that all the neighbourhood kids play our on our street by day, and the way we gather round the firepit with friends in the garden by night.
Perhaps I’d feel differently if I lived in a warmer climate, but being a Brit, our British summers are usually just so short and always feel gone too soon…
So each year as September appears amidst a flurry of ‘back to school’ busyness, and summer fades away I feel a little pinch of sadness. All those long, warm summer nights are over, replaced seemingly overnight by days that are darker, skies that are greyer, and weather that is colder - all early warning signs of the long and lingering winter months ahead.
And as the darker evenings begin to roll in, I never cease to be shocked or surprised by how quickly we transition.
“Look how dark it is, and it’s not even 6pm yet!” I catch myself exclaiming in surprised tones to anyone who will listen - even though it happens EVERY. single. year.
So I don’t really care too much for the fall. And if I could choose to live in summer all the time, I probably would! But the fact is that I really can’t spend more than half of every year feeling negative or wishing that I could be somewhere else (ideally somewhere hot and with a beach!), so instead these days I am learning to accept every season in nature as a necessary and needed part of life.
A time for everything
One of very my favourite passages in the Bible is Ecclesiastes 3, which is a fairly well known piece of poetry about the different seasons of life we encounter through life; seasons of birth and seasons of death, seasons to plant and seasons to uproot, seasons of hurting and seasons of healing, seasons of joy and seasons of despair.
But the part I am drawn to most is right in the very opening refrain, with the reassuring promise that everything has it’s time and it’s place.
“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:1)
There are seasons of life that we all love to be in - seasons of breakthrough, celebration, and joy. But surely this promise is also for those harder seasons too? Surely it’s also for those seasons that leave us feeling a bit more like I do about the fall?
There is a time and a purpose for every season, because every season prepares the way for the next one… and then the one that comes after that.
Without some moments of sadness, how would we fully enjoy those moments of joy?
Without some moments of difficulty, how would we ever learn to overcome?
And without some seasons of loss, how well would we truly appreciate all that we have?
Do we have to like them all? No. But there is a time and a purpose for everything. And in that respect, every season is a gift from God. Even the seasons of life that feel hardest.
What the fall is teaching me
There’s a famous quote from an unknown source that I often see posted on social media at this time of year which says this:
“The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let things go.”
I think this is so true! But the actual act of letting old things go is often much easier said than done. Change can be really hard on our human hearts, can’t it?
It can feel so painful and scary to let go of what we’ve been holding onto, even those ‘dead’ things that aren’t producing any new life.
Often we worry that by letting go we will be left empty-handed, and sometimes even holding something that’s dying or sucking the life from us can feel better than holding nothing at all…
It’s such an act of faith to trust God with the unknown and just let go. Yet just as nature’s seasonal shifts keep making space for the dead things to fall to the ground and die so that something new can begin to bud up and grow in it’s place, isn’t this also often true in our lives?
And unless we open up our hands up and begin to release our grip, how will we ever be able to receive what God wants to put into them?
Tightly clenched fists can’t hold anything new at all.
What season of life are you in?
I wonder what kind of life season you are in right now? Have you paused to consider this recently?
For many of us, this present season is one of transitioning from summer break, and back into a more normal routine and pace of life. For many more of us, this season is also one of lingering uncertainty, as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic continues to unfold…
For me, this is also a season of continued waiting after four years of infertility battles; waiting for healing, waiting for fresh direction, and waiting to finally be able to move onto a new chapter of our lives…
It probably goes without saying that this last season in my life hasn’t been an easy one for me. It’s been laced with so much loss and grief and uncertainty, and then a global pandemic which added isolation and loneliness into the mix.
Sometimes when life feels hard, those seasonal changes just can’t come quick enough, can they?
But right here, in the midst of this difficult season and my continued longing for change, observing the seasonal shifts has become such a gift to me.
The changing of the seasons is like an ever-present reminder etched into nature itself by God that nothing lasts forever.
Every season is finite.
Everything has a beginning and an end.
And He promises to make everything beautiful again in time.
Getting through hard seasons
So where does that leave us?
Well what if instead of just wasting energy resisting or resenting the season we find ourselves in, we actually opened our eyes the goodness that exists right where we are?
And what if instead of feeling negative, complaining or continually wishing we could be somewhere else, we started proactively seeking out those moments of joy in today?
I don’t know about you, but to me this feels like a far better approach to getting through any season in life that feels hard, long or unwelcome.
That’s why this year I am choosing to focus in on all the things I do like about the fall, and seeking out ALL the beauty that I can possibly find in this present season.
In fact, I have even written a list of 21 things I love about the fall to help get me kickstarted. And in case it helps you too, you can link to it below...