Seasons

Seasons are a wonderful part of our world. I am thankful I live in a place where I experience all four seasons – spring, summer, fall, and winter.

Each season carries with it its own beauty. Spring is full of new life and growth as the colours emerge from the sleep of winter. Summer boasts of long warm days of endless sunshine. Fall, my favorite of all the seasons, ushers in cooler weather and we see the leaves on the trees turn to fabulous shades of yellow, orange, red, and brown, blowing in the wind, leaving their beautiful debris scattered across the yard. And then comes winter, with each delicate snowflake falling from the sky creating a beautiful blanket of snow.

While there is beauty in every season, we can also find things we don’t like in every season as well. Perhaps the temperature is too hot or too cold. Maybe the rain or the mud make life too messy. The grass needs to be mowed, the leaves need to be raked, or the snow needs to be shoveled, sometimes creating unwanted work.

We can choose to be thankful for the seasons and see the good in each of them or we can choose to complain. Really, whether we’re thankful or complaining doesn’t change the seasons from cycling. It does change how we move through the seasons though.

While seasons are a yearly cycle we go through in the natural, remember that we also go through seasons in our lives as well. At times we see so much new growth in our lives while at other times things seem to be dying and falling off of our lives like the leaves in the fall. Sometimes we’re moving along through life at a nice comfortable temperature while at other times life is so hot that you feel like you’re on fire or so cold that you feel like you’re freezing. No matter what you’re going through, remind yourself that it’s just a season and seasons change.

Choose to see the beauty in each season. If you’re going through a hard, dry season right now, cry if you need to. Let your emotions out, but also remember you won’t be in this season forever.

Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking we’re weak if we feel the pressures or especially if we allow the pressures to leak out through our eyes. I don’t see this as weakness, but rather strength. It takes strength to admit you’re feeling pressure and then to face it and walk through it whether that means walking through dry-eyed or with tears streaming down your face, limping along on your own or being held up by another.

If we’re honest, we’ve all faced pressures that, at times, seem almost too much to bear. I think the problem is that for too long we’ve tried to cover them up so no one can see our struggles. Like a social media post, we tend to show the highlights of our lives to those around us while trying to keep hidden the pressures we walk through, pretending they’re not there. By doing this, we unknowingly put across to others that were so strong we don’t face pressures which can tend to make others feel that they don’t measure up or that we’re not vulnerable enough to let them see the real us.

I guarantee you that the person you view as being so strong faces pressures and hard times just as you do. In reality, if you’re human you’re going to face pressures.

So, no matter what season you find yourself in right now, don’t be afraid to feel it, but don’t be afraid to see all of it too – the positive and the negative. In every season there is beauty to be found.