Embracing the Seasons of Life: Finding Faith in Every Transition

I love a good planner. Something about seeing the actual dates spread out before me and being able to fill in the little squares is fulfilling to me.

I’ve always been this way. As a child, I already understood the thrill of creating a to-do list and marking things off as I accomplished them.

Now, a planner helps me to take that childhood habit to a whole new level.

My calendar tells me things too, like the exact day a new season starts.

I know it’s not like I’m going to run to the window and look outside and see a day that’s drastically different from the day before though.

I understand the science behind the official days of each season, but I also know there’s no way to say there’s an exact date when it’s all of a sudden no longer summer but fall.

The seasons flow into one another, at least where I live, giving me a chance to adjust to each one.

There are places that don’t obey the four-seasons-spread-out–over-twelve-months rule, but those places are the exception.

My friend mentioned recently how we go through seasons in life too.

I haven’t been able to get that out of my head because I don’t like not being able to choose my season. I’m sure we all get comfortable and want things to stay like they are from time to time.

When I was a young mother, it didn’t really occur to me that, thanks to the way children grow, I was moving from season to season. No, I was too busy living life, too busy being busy with it all.

Even when college years rolled around, it still felt like my seasons were blurring together.

After all, my life still revolved around my children even if they didn’t live under my roof most of the time.

I knew they were coming home for weekends and holidays and summers. It was the tiniest of letting go even if, at the time, it often felt quite lonely without them.

No one could have prepared me for being the mother to adult children though.

Not young adults, but the kind that are rounding the corner to middle age. The kind who have forged out lives of their own.

But, as my friend who is my age reminded me, we are simply in a new season.

My calendar didn’t prepare me very well for this because my heart can’t stop seeing my small children every time I look at my offspring who are both nearing forty years old.

It seems my heart doesn’t understand the changing of the seasons very well.

But I know this is something universal. I know I’m not the first one to resist it. I also know that when the leaves on the trees outside my window choose to change colors and eventually fall to reveal bare limbs, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a reason for each season of our lives.