What season of life are you in right now?
Is your life going well? Maybe you are in love and your feet feel like they barely even touch the floor as you spring out of bed each morning.
Or, perhaps your feet feel like 50-pound weights as you trudge down the hall to make breakfast after being up three different times during the night with your baby.
You could be in a season of grieving a loss in life, wondering if you will ever feel like dancing again.
No matter what is going on in your life, you are in a season that won’t last forever. Knowing that life comes in seasons can benefit you in 9 ways.
The first time I heard an older, wiser woman talk about seasons
We crowded around both the kitchen table and dining room table that sunny Thanksgiving Day, pulling in extra chairs from other rooms.
The kitchen counters overflowed with turkey, cornbread dressing (a southern thing), a green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, and various other side dishes, cookies, and cakes.
Once again, our home was the gathering place for our family on holidays–my husband and I, our kids, and our parents. And, as usual, we had invited some extras. This particular Thanksgiving, we’d invited our friends–the McCains–to join us. And they did. They brought grandma.
I’m so glad they did.
That Thanksgiving Day, Cyndi McCain’s mom–the grandma–said something as we sat around, eating and talking and laughing, that I really needed to know. Janice Reynolds said that life comes in seasons. That’s the way God made it to work, she explained.
Before she’d retired, Janice worked as an estimator for a moving company. She was the person who would go to someone’s home, look at all the stuff to be moved, and figure the cost of moving.
Over the years, Janice noticed the young couples whose homes she visited would talk about all they were going to buy and do. The older couples usually talked about how much they needed to get rid of before they moved. Different seasons of life, Janice said.
She knew firsthand about different seasons in life. Janice’s husband had passed away after many years of marriage, raising their girls together, and loving on their grandkids. Suddenly, Janice found herself in a new season of life: a widow. Would take time to get accustomed to this new season, she said.
I’d heard the Bible verses from Ecclesiastes 3 before about there being a time for everything, but I had never thought about how those verses applied to my life until after Janice talked about seasons that Thanksgiving.
Over the next few days, I turned this new idea of seasons over and over in my mind, picturing times in my life. I grew up in a family. Went to college. Then, I was a young, single woman, living on my own.
I’d gotten married and my husband and I had a wondrous time of living as newlyweds. Our lives changed forever and for better when our daughter was born. And, again, when God blessed us with our son.
We went through the seasons of Barbies, Disney princess movies, and hair bows with our daughter, followed by the seasons of Thomas the Tank Engine, Hot Wheels cars, and lightsabers with our son.
I realized that, when raising kids, I would settle into a season of life and start to get comfortable only to discover the season was changing to something else. By the time of Thanksgiving with the McCains and Janice, our little girl had moved into the high school season, which meant learning to drive and wanting to date.
Here’s how knowing about seasons will help you in your life
1. When you walk through a trial, remember that it won’t last forever. Realizing that one season of life will end and another will begin helps me and it can help you. When walking through a difficult season of life, we can remind ourselves that it won’t last forever.
For example, since that Thanksgiving, my husband and I (and our kids) have helped take care of his mom, his stepdad, and my dad through the dying process. Three different grandparents to our kids. Three different personalities. Three different sets of health issues. Three different funerals. Tough! But, each dying process was only for a season.
2. Look for what God has shown you/done in you through the previous season. What have you learned? Did God convict you of a sin you need to confess to Him? A sin area you need God’s help in overcoming? Did God reveal something about His character to you? Did God answer your prayers in a big way?
3. Keep walking with God even during a dry season in your life. Do you feel like your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling? I’ve been there. Sooner or later, every Christian feels that way. Remember, the dry season–like all the other seasons–won’t last, either.
4. Treasure the sweet moments. Another way knowing that life comes in seasons helps me is that I make myself treasure the sweet moments.
One of those was swinging on our backyard swing with my husband on a sweltering summer evening as the lightning bugs came out, twinkling above the grass, around the shrubbery, and, in a few minutes, all the way to the tops of the pine trees, just like lights on Christmas trees. Oliver and I swung in silence, glancing at each other and smiling at the wonder of that moment, knowing that, of course, the summer would eventually end and the lightning bugs would disappear in the fall.
Same with our son being a little boy who liked to climb a tree by the front porch and perch on a branch every day. Seeing him in his tree would be only for a season. One day, he would simply stop climbing trees. I treasured those moments with Joe.
5. Walk with God in each season. You may have to change your schedule as you go into a new season of life so you can spend time daily with God, reading the Bible and praying.
Having a baby, starting a new job, sitting in the hospital with an ill family member, packing to move or any number of circumstances can easily get in the way of spending time with God each day. So, make whatever schedule adjustments you need to make so you can be in God’s Presence, particularly when you are walking through a difficult season of life.
6. Don’t let the devil steal your joy. Our enemy doesn’t want us to be joyful so he’ll try to get us to be anxious, worried, distracted, impatient, and anything else that keeps us from asking for and receiving the gifts God has for us.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Galatians 5:22.
If you aren’t feeling joy in your current season, ask God for the gift of joy. He wants you to have joy. Joy doesn’t come from your situation. Joy may seem out of reach in your season, but joy is always available to you from God. For free. So ask.
7. Don’t try to hang on to a season that’s over. I remember fighting back the tears the day my daughter asked me to help her box up her dolls. But I helped her anyway. I realized her season of being a little girl was officially over but a new season of being a preteen was beginning. I felt sad for a few days when I thought of the dolls, but I was quickly swept up into the world of first bras, teaching my daughter to shave her legs, buying items for her new sport, and looking at paint colors for her bedroom.
What about you? Do you need to let go of the previous season in your life so you can embrace the new one? If you are struggling, ask God to help you.
8. Don’t let your season define you. You are God’s beloved. Being His defines who you are–not your circumstances. Resist the urge to think of yourself as just a stay-at-home mom or just a divorcee or just a widow. Or just anything except what you truly are: loved by God. Where you live, where you work, the people under your roof, what you wear, what you eat, and pretty much everything else in your life will change. God’s love for you is the one constant.
9. Prepare for the next season. What can you read now? Is there a class you can take? A Bible Study to join? Some podcasts to listen to while you drive or exercise? Try this one: https://proverbs31.org/listen/podcast.
A number of ministries and churches have apps you can use to listen to sermons while you go about your daily life. Check out: tonyevans.org/; and http://www.gty.org/.
Keep learning. You will be amazed at how God will use tomorrow what you learn today.
Nearly 3,000 years ago, King Solomon, considered the wisest person to ever live, said that life comes in seasons:
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: 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 time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, 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.” Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Life does, indeed, come in seasons.
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