Seasons

Around this time of year, you start to hear people talking about “the holiday season” and people start wishing you “Seasons Greetings.” It seems that around October a flurry of season-focused activity begins. The weather changes, the leaves light up and drift down, and the days become shorter. It’s Halloween, and then before you know it, Thanksgiving preparations are under way. You hear Christmas music in stores and begin to anticipate the first real snow. It’s the holiday season, the time of year focused on, well, the holidays.


All the talk of seasons has made me think of seasons of life. As we spend our days and our years, we pass through different seasons, times where our experiences, needs, and service are focused in specific and unique ways. Think about the differences between the phases of life of parents with preschoolers and retired grandparents. The demands, troubles, and joys are completely different in these vastly different seasons.

And just as our lives go through different seasons as we grow and mature, our hearts and souls go through different seasons, periods where the needs and experiences of our hearts are unique. Sometimes these heart seasons are heavily influenced by life events; the loss of a loved one, the consuming joy of a new love, distance in key relationships, or times of financial blessing. Other times these heart seasons seem to come organically from our hearts themselves. Nothing significant is happening, but our hearts feel abnormally dry and sad, or inexplicably bursting with joy.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: 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 a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 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.”

I see great value in identifying the season of life we are in. In fact, I believe that some of the pain we experience comes from denying the reality of the season we are in and trying to live as though we were in a different period. For example, I was recently talking to some of the most generous people I know. They are currently in a season where the demands of their family and marriage are high, and they are worn out. They are beginning to see that they cannot live like they could in the last season they walked through, where their family demands were lighter and they had more time and more emotional resources. It can be difficult to make those adjustments, to see the phase you are in and recognize that in some ways you may need to reprioritize.

Similarly, you may take a step back and realize that the season of life you are in comes with an abundance of resources. Perhaps you no longer have children living at home, and you find yourself with some extra hours in the day. Perhaps you are in a period of peace and abundance in your family, and you see that you could open your home to friends and community members.

Some of the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 3 is in recognizing that there many different seasons, seasons of life and seasons of the heart. There is a time to give and a time to receive, a time to weep and a time to rejoice, a time to spend and a time to save, a time to save and a time to give. These seasons are temporary. Some feel very short, like fall in New England, which seems to evaporate quickly into winter. Some feel very long, like the first months of a new baby’s life where parents get very little sleep. But all are passing and temporary, and the season you are in now will soon pass to another. What season are you living? What are the unique needs and limitations you experience for this season, and how can you give yourself grace as you walk through it? What resources and abundance do you have to share as you journey through this unique season of your life?