There Is A Season

Seasons.  They come and they go.  Summer gives way to autumn, autumn gives way to winter, and so on.  We know this.  We get this.  We see a bare tree in the winter and rather than cutting it down saying it bears no fruit, we wait.  We wait until the spring knowing the weather will change and it will give way to another beautiful blooming season.

I know this, and I have seen this.

I remember when my husband and I were first married.  He was teaching, and I was attending college full-time and was working part-time as a bank teller.  We had a brand new apartment in a brand new complex, and we had all that brand new wedding stuff.  Life was good!

Then we found out we would need to move back home to Louisiana for my husband to finish his teacher certification requirements.  Then we found out we were pregnant.  

We moved back, my husband enrolled in the certification program, and found a teaching job…an hour from where we lived…making significantly less than what he was making before…and was enrolled in college again.  I returned to work part-time…enrolled in school full-time…and in between semesters, we had a baby.  

Thankfully (and I use that term loosely), since we were both college students, we qualified for married student housing.  We were the proud (I use this loosely as well) tenants of a one bedroom, one bathroom, cinder block wall unit that I am sure was built even before my parents were born.  It was the quintessential “just married” apartment…except that we had already had our first apartment…and it was nice, and new, and clean, and new.  This…was not any of those things.  

For the most part, all of our furnishings fit in this dank, tiny apartment except for one very vital appliance…our dryer.  The apartment only had room for stackables and we had a full sized set. So we had to make a decision: keep the washer or keep the dryer and store the other.  I opted to keep the washer; I figured it was easier to hang dry clothes or take them to the washateria than it was to use an old-fashioned wash board in the bathtub!

So there we were.  My still new husband, my tiny little baby, this tee-tiny apartment, and our washing machine.

It wasn’t long until our one bathroom doubled as a drying room for tiny clothes and soft blankets as I hung them on the shower rod to dry.

These drying baby clothes were adorable, but they were also a reminder of just how stuck we were.  The baby bed was wedged between our bed and our closet in our not so master bedroom, the baby bottles were squeezed in between the small microwave and the small sink on our small amount of counter space, and the washing machine was obvious and out of place in the kitchen next to our refrigerator.  And there we were.  This was our life.

I remember days feeling like I didn’t sign up for this.  Days thinking we must have made some wrong turn.  Days wondering how long this would last and if we could make it out and make things better.  The days seemed harder when I could tell my new husband was feeling and thinking it too.

And somehow, I finally realized, this was temporary.  Yes, that was our right now, but we were working hard, we were doing the best we could, and even though we felt like we were at a standstill, we were really going places.  One day I mustered up the courage to look my new husband in the eyes and to tell him, if we are lucky enough to be married for the next 50 years, this is but a blip on the radar.  This will one day be a memory stacked on top of lots of other wonderful memories.  What I was trying to say was this is only a season of life, and just as winter turns to spring, this too will turn to brighter, warmer days.

And sure enough, it did.  We were in that tiny apartment for less than a year.  After that, my husband was fully certified, we moved back to Texas where we bought our first home, and since then we have continued to work towards that 50th wedding anniversary!

For me, I dislike winter the most so I see the hard and difficult times in life as a winter.  These are times when life feels cold and dark, when it seems the gray skies will never give way to the sun.  And just like the actual winter, we never really know how long it will last.  But as much as I dislike the actual winter, I know one thing for sure…in all my years of existence on this earth, every single year winter has given way to spring.  Every single time. 

The truth is, it is important that we look up and recognize the various seasons of our lives.  I think we should relax in those seasons that feel like summer, embrace the changes that are coming in the seasons that feel like autumn, brace ourselves through the hard times of winter, and know that a new season of change is on the horizon.  The truth is, we can appreciate it all for what it is and where it takes us.  The truth is, we can embrace this life one season at a time!