Seasons and Change by Mary Folkerts

 

There is a change in the air, the morning feels a bit crisper, the smells of the ripening harvest warm in the lingering golden sun. The calendar tells me that summer is wrapping up and fall is taking its place. It doesn't ask if I am ready; it just comes when it comes.

Seasons are like that. They don't wait for our permission to shift from one to the next. They slide past whether we have had our fill or not. Where I live, seasons are usually quite recognizable when we're smack dab in the middle of them, with their snowy winters and hot summers, shy springs and colourful autumns. It's the transitions from one season to the next that can sometimes be tricky to gauge.

Life, too, has its many seasons, some soft and easy like spring, new with possibilities. Others, like winter, we resist for their harsh, unforgiving ways. But always, they come as sure as the rising sun. Some we see coming from a distance, gently, and expected. Others come in swiftly like a too-early snowstorm.

My parents received a phone call the other week, which threw them into a new season without much forewarning. They are now trying to wrap their minds around assisted living after a lifetime of independence. And oh, how we struggle with change, even in the twilight of our years! Though we have experienced change at every stage of life, it never seems to get easier!

We love what we know, even if it's difficult, because the difficult we know feels safer than the unknown. As I write, I gaze out on the corn field standing tall in the evening sun. The season of planting is long gone, and the season of growing is coming to an end. Soon, the harvest will be upon us, and lastly, the season where the soil rests. Each season for a purpose, as God has ordained it to be good.

Can we recognize each season of life as for our good? Can we see the season of waiting as beneficial to growing our reliance on God's timing? Can we view the desert season as a time when we trust God's presence, even when we can't feel it? Can we trust the God of the seasons to give us all we need in our seasons of change?


Seasons and change
like the falling leaves
and the spent flower
leave a sadness
with their
fading
beauty.

Change is hard
unfamiliar and
uncertain--
with a dirge of
lament we resist
the becoming.
“Let’s just always stay
The same!”
But without change
comes
deadness.

And what if it’s not
the end
but the beginning
of a new story,
unwritten and
unscripted?
A new season
with beauty
unexpected?

I can be sad
that it’s over
or I can smile that it happened.
I can dig in my heels
or march bravely on
into change.
Either way
it will
come.

And as the God of
the seasons
designs spring to
follow winter,
so he allows the
seasons of change
in our lives
for our growing
and becoming.

For change is the medium
in which a seed of faith
has the opportunity
to grow and
flourish
into something
beautiful.

Mary Folkerts is mom to four kids and wife to a farmer, living on the southern prairies of Alberta, where the skies are large and the sunsets stunning. She is a member of Proverbs 31 Ministries' COMPEL Writers Training, involved in church ministries and music. Mary’s blog aims to encourage and inspire women and advocate for those with Down Syndrome, as their youngest child introduced them to this extraordinary new world. For more inspiration, check out Joy in the Small Things https://maryfolkerts.com/ or connect on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/maryfolkerts/