HELD

“For everything there is a season…” Ecclesiastes 3:1

The first question that my life coach asked at my first coaching session was “What season (in terms of seasons of the year) do you think your life is in right now?”  I didn’t have to pause; I didn’t have to think; I immediately had an answer.  I, the slowest of processors and the most indecisive of decision makers, blurted out my answer without giving it a second thought.  “I’m in early spring,” I said without hesitation.  I continued, “and I only know that because I have just come out of the darkest winter.”  

Seasons mark us, they change us.  Just as the earth visibly changes with each passing season, so does our soul transform with each God-given season.  Seasons pass differently for all of us and some seasons are shortened or prolonged by God’s hand or our own doing, but make no mistake each season is marking you for the good and glory of God.  My winter season was long, too long, and just like the Long Winter in Narnia, I was waiting on Aslan to return and bring spring.  My winter season was marked by darkness, isolation,  and pain.  It seemed as if I was in a pitch-black room, trying to feel my way out but instead of finding the door, I kept running into the walls, leaving bruising all over my body.  I could feel the marking of that season but it felt like more like permanent damage than “all things working for good” (Rom 8:28).

But…God. Isn’t that how we make sense of all our painful seasons? But…God.  But God is a masterful gardener who understands the changing of seasons and knows that for buds to bloom and blossom, they must first be seeds buried in the deep, dark earth.  He knows that there will be a season of dormancy, where there is no visible growth, where the seed sees no light. He knows that dormant season may be the most important season of all, because He knows that the most formational changes occur on the inside before they are seen on the outside. 

That winter season was dark and it was lonely and it was painful but it wasn’t meaningless or wasted. God was working on my behalf, tilling the soil, watering the seed, preparing the ground for His next new thing to emerge. In a season where I didn’t feel it or see it, he was transforming me.  And one day in the midst of that long, dark, painful season, a flower bloomed.