For a more condensed version of this post, please scroll down to the “embrace” picture below.
I want to let you in on a little secret: I hate winter. I don’t like the cold. I only like to look at snow – I very rarely want to be IN it, and I definitely don’t want to drive in it. And the lack of sunshine (especially in lake effect Western Michigan) is awful – it affects my mood which affects my physical health which affects my mood which….well, you get the idea…
But here’s the thing: Winter is only a season. And it will not last forever, which is the hope I hold onto when I wake up to yet another dreary, weary, cold, wet, damp day.
Thank the Lord that spring has finally made it’s appearance! And by spring, I mean sunshine. I am soaking up the sun every moment I possibly can…especially when there is an 80% chance of snow on Monday. What?!?
Life is full of seasons. Good seasons, bad seasons, meh seasons. Some of those seasons fly by and some of them seem to drag on and on and oooooonnnnn for what seems like an eternity.
What season do you find yourself in right now? Lately, I haven’t been able to determine the “type of season” I’m in. Is it a dormant season, like winter, where life is more restful and waiting? Or is it a season of growth, new life, and abundance? Or maybe a season of transition (more like fall) where there isn’t much going on but you can feel something new stirring, things slowly changing?
If we’re really honest, spring and fall aren’t really seasons – they’re more like periods of transition between the two actual seasons. I mean, think about it: neither lasts long – some days are more like the season before and some days are more like the season coming. Yes, there are defining features (rain and new blossoms, changing leaves, etc.) but, again, those features are transition.
But maybe transition is, in and of itself, its own type of season.
As I ramble, I realize that transition is probably the season that takes up most of my life. I feel as if most of my life has been adjusting to a “new normal.” And no, not because of a pandemic (though that was a transition to be sure). I went from college to marriage, we moved a year or so later, and then moved again. Soon after that we had our first child and then our second. Then we started a ministry (in the midst of said pandemic) and, most recently, we uprooted our lives and moved 7 hours away to a new state. 12-ish years and SO much change.
So, yeah, transition is definitely a season. Spring, Fall, I apologize, I take back what I said before. You are real seasons. And, apparently, those transition seasons are where we spend most of our lives, well, at least for me.
But I digress. The point of this post wasn’t to debate what is or isn’t a season, or even to talk about transition. Rather, I wanted to talk about embracing the season you may find yourself in – good or bad, winter, summer, or somewhere in-between.
Now let’s be real for a second – who in their right mind wants to embrace a difficult season?!? No one. No one wants to do that.
The thing is – hindsight. Often, those difficult seasons, when looked back upon, are the seasons where we have seen the most growth, when we have become more of who we were made to be, where our testimony adds another chapter.
Justin and I entered a very difficult season a few years before the pandemic. Things had seemed to be going swimmingly well. We had great friends, a wonderful church, and family planning was on track – we were pregnant with our second! Fast forward 6ish weeks and everything was flipped upside down when very close friends of ours decided to leave our church and, by default, our relationship. One week later, at 12 weeks pregnant, we suffered a miscarriage. I remember sitting in the ER, part of me in denial, part of me angry, part of me overwhelmingly sad. I can still see Justin, sitting in the tan hospital room chair, up against the beige wall, the white and blue curtain pulled closed beside him, holding his head in his hand: “Why is this all happening to us? Why now?”
And that’s how it felt. In one of our most difficult moments, we didn’t even have our friends to depend upon. This wasn’t how everything was supposed to go. I even wrote a post a few weeks later that expressed my anguish and my struggle with why we didn’t get the miracle.
While, in no way, would I ever wish to live through that season again, I have come to appreciate how God used it to weave a greater story than I could have ever imagined. Which, by the way, is what He promises in His Word (Romans 8:28, Ephesians 3:20).
God will use the difficult seasons to make us stronger, to teach us what we need to learn, to helps us grow closer and closer into His image. Here are just a few of the things that season has done for us:
- I have been able to walk alongside others who have suffered a miscarriage (1 in 4 women) and I talk about it openly and often so that it is no longer a taboo subject.
- I have been able to discuss the value of life with my children through the memory of the child I never got to hold. We have a picture of a baby sea turtle making its way to the sea on our gallery wall to remember that child, as well as a box with ultrasound pictures and other small mementos of that short time. My oldest will ask to look at the box all the time. And each time we end up asking deeper questions.
- We now look at conflict within the church much differently and know that handling conflict or offense Biblically is literally the best and healthiest way (Matthew 18:15-22). You cannot walk away from the issues. I am a huge advocate for dealing with offense instead of letting it fester or ignoring it and pretending it didn’t happen. My first question in these situations is always: “Have you talked to that person?” Because I have seen, repeatedly, what happens when you don’t. I’ve seen what happens when people assume one thing or another. I have seen the grape vine of gossip that twists what was said (or done) into something out of proportion.
Sometimes, Often times, because we don’t have the boldness to face the conflict, it escalates into something irreparable. (A great resource for this is the book The Bait of Satan.)
- Healthy church leadership is hard to come by and should be valued when it is.
- Being the pastor’s family, even as adults, is a extraordinarily difficult spotlight to be in. There are always expectations that won’t be met, there are unending heavy matters to attend to, and the weight of it all is ever present (especially for the pastor).
I am eternally grateful for how that season shaped me, for how God used what wrecked me, to make me a better version of myself that looks a lot more like Him than it used to. I should clarify: Do I believe that God caused these things? Absolutely not. But did He turn the fallen and broken pieces of our life into something beautiful and worthwhile? 100% yes.
Did I have to go through those things to learn some of the valuable lessons that I have? Maybe. I certainly wouldn’t be who I am today without having suffered through that season.
Did I embrace that season? Probably not. But I have now.
And maybe that’s where you are. Maybe you are in a season that you cannot fathom embracing – be it heartache, a cancer diagnosis, loss of a loved one, a natural disaster, or something else. Maybe this season feels like four winters in a row – with no sunshine in sight. Embracing that sounds bizarre, even asinine.
Think of it this way. An embrace takes two objects – you have to embrace something be it a telephone pole or a person. For this illustration, let’s assume an embrace involves two people. What if embracing the season means finding yourself in an embrace with the Lord? Some seasons we need to embrace Him for dear life – like a child who hasn’t yet learned how to swim, arms wrapped tightly around His neck, immovable, white knuckled, and afraid to let go – He is your lifeline to surviving the tumultuous seas around you. Or maybe you find yourself at the end of your rope. There isn’t any strength left, you want to give up. Friend, all I’m asking of you in this season is to lean into the embrace. Lean into the arms of the Father, let Him hold you up, let His strength be what keeps you afloat. It’s still an embrace if His arms are around you, so lean in.
One way or another, embrace the season, even if that means barely holding on. I can promise you two things:
- God will take the worst season and use it for good (so long as you truly love Him, see Romans 8:28).
- This season won’t last forever. Spring is coming. Sunshine is just around the corner and the flowers will bloom again. Hold on, friend, hold on.
Hold on.