Seasons

A sweet friend gave me two bags of baking apples recently. I am anxious to bake some pies, apple crisp, and even try this. This is truly my favorite season.

Each year as the Fall season is ushered in with the sights of apples and pumpkins, it also brings soccer, football, back to school, and now volleyball. I have been busily attending meetings, managing the mounds of paperwork and forms, writing checks for this and that and trying to establish some sort of routine so that the homework is being checked, the reading is getting done and everyone gets to where they need to be.

I have received all the the practice/game schedules and have carefully entered the necessary information into our calendar setting up reminders so that nothing is missed and hoping we can sit on the sidelines as often as possible.

I have learned that just as quickly as this season came upon us, it too will quickly turn and change. If I am not careful, I will miss it. So, I choose not to fret too much about the stuff and the things that can wait.

I wish I would have understood this a decade or so ago. I would have saved myself so much frustration if I could have learned to be content in the season and place that I was in. I battled over my lack of being able to do it all. Oh, I did not readily admit that this was my goal, it was an inward battle over trying to maintain some outward appearance.

I wanted to have my house clean, my kids closets organized, toddlers and preschoolers who followed my neatly organized plans, laundry that stayed on top of itself and as I began homeschooling my oldest daughter a lesson plan that would fall neatly into our day. My life was anything but that. I left a high level management position in the corporate world with a promising future to be at home full time with my children. I had many moments of feeling like a complete failure. It is the hardest job I have ever had, and yet the most rewarding, and I get to sit in a position that was set apart just for me.

I am thankful for the wise words of older women in my life who would often remind me of what truly mattered. The words, “they grow up so fast or treasure these days when your kids are little” often fell on the ears of a weary mom who could not see past the chaos that prevailed. It took work to plant those words in my mind and heart. To live them out and believe that one day I will understand it all.

My seasons have changed. I am in a brand new one again. I have taken on a very small part-time job along with the ministry. Life is busy, very busy. But I know that just as the days in the park sitting on a blanket with preschoolers playing and a nursing baby crawling around me have begun to fade, these days will too and a new season will be upon us.

Yesterday as I sat on another hard bleacher watching, smiling, and cheering at my daughter's volleyball game, a tear trickled down my cheek. I reached over and squeezed my three old and thought about Paul's words in Philippians 4:12,

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

What season are you in?