To everything there is a season.
Life. It’s a constant struggle between what is and what I think should be. It’s a battle between normalcy and a constant state of change. Nothing really stays the same in an ever changing world, where even the seasons come and go faster than I could ever imagine.
Sure, I make my plans. I set my goals. “By the time this gets here, I will be there.” Or, “When I grow up, I will do this and that.”
But life is so much different than you or I imagine as children. That certain time gets here and we aren’t anywhere near where we thought we would be. Or we look around and here we are, all grown up, and we still haven’t accomplished that goal or dream we always thought we would.
Life is change.
And sometimes I wish it wasn’t.
A time to mourn, and a time to dance.
So I can mourn for what I think should be, but isn’t. I grow bitter towards the changing seasons. Because just as our world turns from the bright, vibrant colors of summer into the darker, cooler winds of winter, so our lives change seasons too. We grow up. We become caught up in the fast pace of life, until we look around and we’re so far from what we always wanted. Sometimes it’s by our own doing. And sometimes… sometimes, it’s just life.
I cry out. I beg God for answers, because I don’t understand why life can’t just be what I always imagined it would. I don’t understand why dreams can’t always come true, or people can’t always stay, or seasons have to change.
A time of war, and a time of peace.
So I fight against what I have no control over.
Perhaps, I wouldn’t call it that. I might call it, “keeping busy” or “distraction.”
But I’m fighting it.
Instead of looking around at the darker colors of autumn and admiring their beauty too, I get bitter about losing the vibrant colors of summer.
I angrily wipe away my tears over things that I wish could be different and I shake my fist towards heaven.
“Why have things turned out this way?” I demand an answer. “Why has the beauty faded?”
Ah, yes. The beauty.
It’s easy for you and I to see the beauty of the springtime and summertime colors. The vibrant hues of pink or blue. We laugh and rejoice in it. This is how beauty should be, we convince ourselves.
And when life’s beauty turns out to be different than we imagined?
We push it away. It’s not how we want it and we want the beauty to be our way. We don’t want to find beauty here in the grey ash colors of winter. We don’t want to find beauty in something we never wanted to come.
Maybe in doing this, we’re missing something…
Perhaps we’re missing the beauty God intended for us all along.
I ponder this. Could it be?
Could it be that there is a different kind of beauty in the changing seasons than I ever knew? For if winter never came I would never get to jump into piles of perfect white snow and laugh at the cold on my skin. If winter never came I would never learn to search with anticipation for the blossoming buds of springtime flowers.
Yes, life does not always turn out how I imagined it would once upon a time. Life changes and the seasons come and go faster than I would sometimes like.
Life is different.
But different doesn’t mean less beautiful. Different doesn’t mean worthless. It’s simply a different kind of beautiful than I imagined it would be.
Yes. Life is beautiful. A different kind of beautiful, but so very beautiful. God whispers it to me in every changing season. Look for My beauty here. Look for the beauty I want to give you in this place.
And His different is so much more beautiful than anything I ever had planned.
He has made everything beautiful in His time.
