Beauty in Each Season

Do you spend your life waiting for the next season to start?

I just can’t wait for …

And then when it arrives, once again falling into discontentment?

Or what about looking backwards to previous seasons?

Wow, life sure was great when …

I know I have done both of these and have to fight against it!

As a single woman, I would daydream about what it would be like to be married, to get to cook for my husband, to get to snuggle up for in-home dates, to get to talk for hours about our feelings.

When our first baby was a newborn, I would anticipate the fun things we would do when she was a toddler and a preschooler – the craft projects, gifts made with footprints, exciting sensory boxes, and all the cooking we’d do together.

Now I think about the years of homeschooling we have ahead of us, and how great it will be sitting on the couch reading read-alouds together, building to-scale models of the pyramids and the Nile river, dissecting frogs, and drawing in our nature journals.

I also struggle with looking at young marrieds and comparing my life now to theirs.  Ah, the date nights, snuggles, dinners without interruptions …

But no.

We just cannot live like this.

I don’t want to glorify the life I don’t have.

I want to glorify GOD.

I want to be fully present in the life I am living at this very moment.

I want to thank HIM for the good gifts (and the challenges) He has given me today.

I am growing in contentment, by the grace of God.  This year has been full of divinely-placed opportunities for me to be content in whatever circumstance.  I see Christ working in my heart and giving me contentment and joy.  It is still a struggle, though.

Always, always, I have to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5) and pray for grace to not just endure this season, but to have deep, abiding joy in it.

There is beauty in this season right now.