For everything there is a season

I've been thinking about seasons and how for everything there is a season. It's simple really as a picture, times of battling the storms and the wind and knowing that endurance is key. Times of gathering and harvesting and enjoying the fruits of labour, a time where wisdom suggests putting a little aside for those cold, stormy days and nights. Some seasons of life are so hard, cruel and challenging and others so simple and calm and rewarding. Being a naturally angsty type, I am all at once happy and slightly unsettled by the calm that I am currently experiencing. It is not that problems and inconsistencies do not exist or that sadnesses and a sense of helplessness at different life experiences has completely left me, it's simply that for now I feel I can handle it. Endurance builds strength, even when there is great disturbance and uprooting and damage done, there is what comes next. Hope. 

For me, hope and strength is found  in prayer. It is my calm, the only way that I can effectively weather the storms. I'm lazy though and stubborn, forever thinking I can do it by myself. Forever opting and reaching for distractions rather than putting some work in, sowing seeds, tending to my growth. Life is so transformed when I quieten the noise and clear the weeds from the path. When I am able to walk freely without carrying all that weight. When I am able to be calm, when I myself am surprised at my own reactions and I say to myself, 'remember this', 'remember this', 'remember this'.

Faith

photo by Jim Davies 2006

At times it feels like time speeds up and all that you would typically experience, say, in a year, you somehow experience and process in a matter of days. This week has seen two huge events in my life, both highly emotive. The first was saying farewell to a friend who recently passed away, a very lovely 'shiny, happy person' forever burned in the memory of all of us who had the pleasure of knowing her. Watching her husband and family bearing their loss with such absolute grace and courage has been truly humbling and inspiring.

Loss is a complex thing. So personal, so open to interpretation and ever changing. When dealing with loss, or even observing someone else's loss, it is so hard not to make it 'all about you'. I think it is one's instinct to think about how the loss either affects them personally or to ponder how they might deal with the loss of their own loved ones. I must admit, I have thought about my Dad often this week. Losing him when I was ten years old I believe has hugely defined my identity and life choices. Yet this week I have been reflecting on not just my ten year old self experiencing loss but also the experience of loss that my mother endured, whilst continuing to be mother to four children aged between ten and seventeen. As a mother myself now, I empathize with mum on an entirely new level .... needless to say, I have so much respect for this incredible woman and once again I am humbled.

This week I have also seen incredible blessing. I have spent much of my time giving thanks for my hubby's life. Hubby was knocked off his bike by a car on his journey to work a few days back and miraculously survived. He is hobbling on a sore and very swollen foot but will make a full recovery and we are both so thankful for God's protection. A nurse who happened to be passing by stopped at the scene and when she saw hubby's distorted foot was convinced that he had a bad break as were the paramedics - we are amazed that his injuries do not reflect the trauma that his body experienced. For some, this is 'luck', 'chance' but for us this is God present in a situation, it is God protecting us and very much God's functional presence in our lives.

photo by Jim Davies 2006