Seasons
For fifty years I lived as if the world had only one season:
“Hurry.”
Spring meant deadlines.
Summer meant conferences.
Fall meant back-to-school meetings.
Winter meant I should probably start running again.
The earth kept turning, but I was too busy checking my email to notice.
Then life slowed me down-without asking permission.
And for the first time since I was four, I wasn’t chained to a school bell or a meeting calendar.
I finally had the time, and the stillness, to stand still and watch the world go by…
I started walking the same road every morning.
Same shoes.
Same time.
Same stretch of cracked pavement.
Here’s the secret I stumbled into:
If you do the same small thing every day, you finally notice how everything else is always-quietly-changing.
In late fall I watched the maples blush, unclench, and let go.
I saw the lawn go from green to brown to a frozen graveyard, and then-return as a spring carpet so thick it mocked my bald patches of grass.
I watched the stars migrate across the horizon, as if they’d been moving all my life and I’d just never bothered to look up.
I discovered the sun doesn’t rise in the same spot every morning but slides along the horizon like it’s practicing a slow, holy dance.
I noticed the birds too-
the bossy geese honking their way south,
the stubborn cardinals who braved the snow,
the sparrows who returned in spring like they’d merely stepped out for coffee.
I even noticed the seasons decorate our neighborhood:
the pumpkins in October,
the inflatable ghosts that always seem to be collapsing face-down by noon,
the sagging strings of Christmas lights still clinging to gutters in February,
a few lopsided hearts for Valentine’s Day,
graduation signs that stay planted until the leaves turn again,
Fourth-of-July flags that fade to a weary pink by August-
and then, back to pumpkins.
It turns out the world has been staging this slow-motion parade the whole time.
I was just sprinting past the floats.
Somewhere in that year of walking and watching, I finally understood what wiser souls have been trying to tell us forever:
We don’t just live through the seasons outside.
We live through them inside.
We have seasons in friendships and marriages.
Seasons of belief and seasons of doubt.
Seasons when we’re the tree letting go of everything we once clung to.
Seasons when we’re the frozen ground, holding our breath.
Seasons when a small, stubborn green shoot pushes through and we dare- cautiously- to hope again.
I used to think winters in my life were proof I was failing at happiness.
Now I know they’re part of the same cycle that brings spring.
Dormancy is not death.
It’s the slow, unseen work beneath the frost.
And here’s the truth that still makes me laugh at myself:
I spent decades trying to be an evergreen- never resting, never shedding-
and then wondered why I felt so bone-tired.
You cannot rush a season.
Not the ones outside.
Not the ones inside.
You cannot scold the bare branches into blooming.
You cannot shame a seed into sprouting.
You wait.
You tend.
You trust.
If you’re in a long winter right now- or that awkward wet thaw of early spring- please know this:
This is a season.
It is not forever.
Something holy is happening beneath the surface even if you can’t see it yet.
The leaves return.
The birds come home.
The light shifts.
The frozen ground gives way.
Maybe the most hopeful thing about the seasons is this:
Not one of them stays.
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”
- Ecclesiastes 3:1
Comments