The sadness set in about 1 month ago. It was the reality that the summer time was almost over. I was picking the last of the peppers from the garden and the tomatoes in their hopeful ignorance were still growing big and round, but ever so green, with no idea that the sun was going to fail them and the cold would chill them to the core. I honestly love the summer garden. I love everything about going out there and planting things in the dirt and then setting my watering system :) and letting the miracle of growth happen. I love picking veggies in the morning to make the sort of meals for my guys that make me feel like I am a super Mom. I love going out there at 5 pm to wonder what I will throw together for dinner. How many ways can a girl cook 5 different types of peppers, okra, and tomatoes? I probably more often than I should revert to curry, but I did come up with some other tasty and very healthy dishes.
So much in me right now is welling up with the changing of seasons, and the desire that so many of us have to hold on... hold on to that time of fruitfulness. When an area of your life looks like this:
all full of vibrant color, you want to stay there in that place. You want to keep being the blossom that beckons the butterfly to land and drink. I am so convinced that one of the greatest desires we have as people made in God's image is to be fruitful. We want our lives to matter for something, to someone. We want to be difference makers, trend setters, prophets, teachers, someone, anyone significant. When we do get to a place of bearing fruit, we want to just stay there... the only problem is this happens
A cold night comes and robs you of your color. It is just the God ordained changing of the seasons. It is the plan of God for my Zinnias to die every November, even though I want to keep them. Even though I love their color and fullness, they die. And it is God's design.
It just may be God's design to lead us into times of winter. When the pepper plants look like this
and you need strong arms to help you prepare your garden for the length of cold (which not complaining in Alabama is about 2 months)
you realize that God is in the midst of all the dying, and us preparing for something new. God is the one leading the way. It is a curious thing that God would lead his people Israel to a place called Marah, or bitter waters (Exodus 15:22-25). Why would God lead his apostles down roads that would get their feet dirty or even down roads of cold, hunger, thirst, imprisonment? God changes our seasons. Sometimes they are seasons of summer with vibrant life and long hot days, other days are winter days with little sun and bone chilling cold. All days are God's days.
Sweet friend, if you are in a season that you have enjoyed but you are feeling God is leading you to a new routine, or vocation, or stage of life, don't hold on to the fruit from yesterday. Hold on to Jesus. If you were great at something last week but you sense God is leading you to do some thing new, follow him, forsaking all else. I have been through some seasons. I am learning to not hold on to how God used me last year, but to hold on to God today, and let him have his way with me in this moment. I needed to till up that garden because those plants were looking mighty puny. I needed to put them in the mulch pile so God would have room for new life.
What are you holding on to with all your little might can muster? Let it go. See what God is up to, and join Him in that adventure.
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