Embracing the Season

by Nancie Carmichael –

Seasons can be confusing. We’ve had an unusually mild winter, and I noticed some bulbs sprouting in the garden. Is it winter or is it spring? Reminds me of my friend Cheryl, who is going through menopause while her daughter is entering puberty. “My seasons are overlapping,” she complained mildly. And yet there are seasons, and “to everything, there is a season,” a wise man once observed.

I took a walk the other day to my favorite spot, Aspen Lake. There are no roads to it, and you have to walk to get there. I sat on a bench beside the lake, soaking in the sun-drenched air, remembering all the times I had been there. The first time was almost thirty years ago, and my youngest son, Andy, was a baby then and rode in a carrier on the back of my bicycle. As the children grew, we often biked to this serene little lake surrounded by aspen trees. My daughter Amy learned to ride her bike here, falling in the soft dirt. “I will never, never learn how to ride a bike,” she had sobbed in frustration. Well, she did learn to ride her bike. And drive a car. Now I mused over Amy’s wedding plans later this summer, as well as Andy’s wedding, only two weeks away.

There were no children on bikes, no dogs there that day. Only three pairs of ducks on the lake, checking out real estate for their approaching season of babies.

I sat on the bench, resisting the feeling that I should go home, work the “to do” list. Isn’t this what I longed for, back in that other season, when my house was so full and life’s demands so urgent? Time to sit in the sunshine, time to think? To write?

What is my season now, I wonder. What is required of me in this place? Yes, there are obvious seasons and cycles of life. But life is constantly changing and maybe it’s possible to miss a season in the overlapping of it, wanting the previous one, or the one that’s ahead, not really being in the one we are in. The wise man also said: “Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’”[1]

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. . .tomorrow is a new day, begin it well. . .with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”

Different seasons call for different things from us, and we may need to let go in order to grab onto the next thing God may be presenting us. How good it is to stop sometimes—as on this beautiful day—and ponder what season we are in and how to fully embrace it.

Nancie Carmichael has worked with her husband, Bill in the writing and publishing field for many years as they published Virtue Magazine and Christian Parenting Magazine.  They now own a book publishing company, Deep River Books.

Nancie and Bill have written several books together including: Lord, Bless My Child; and Lord, Bless This Marriage.

Nancie has written and contributed to many books including Selah: Time to Stop, Think, and Step into Your Future; and her latest book, Surviving One Bad Year—Seven Spiritual Strategies to Lead You to a New Beginning.

Bill and Nancie live in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and are parents to five married children and grandparents to ten. You can learn more about Nancie at:

www.nanciecarmichael.com.