The seasons in our lives are ever changing. We have our basic weather seasons: winter, spring, summer & fall. We have our sport seasons: baseball, football & basketball. We have seasons of change, seasons of joy, seasons of sadness. One thing is sure, with all of these seasons – they are always changing.

My dad once told me that life moves at whatever speed your age is. For example, if you are 10 years old – life moves at 10 miles per hour. If you are 30 years old, thirty miles per hour and 60 years old, 60 miles per hour. Boy, is that true. And not just is the speed of life that fast, but the experience and the change of each season moves that fast too.

One of the saddest parts about life is that you do not realize how great each season is, until it is gone. The fondest memories come after the moment is over. I think back to my awkward middle school and high school days and remember so much of it with the greatest joy and admiration. These days were full of whose house was I going to and who was coming over to mine. The fun of “holy rollers” striking with our toilet paper in the yards, summer youth camps on top of Lookout Mountain, dramas that were the very definition of me called “Late Nite” and squeezing life out of every single second. I think about how those choices and those seasons made up the core of who I am. The time I spent during my college years serving as a youth group leader in hopes of giving back to the next generation the same amazing experiences I once had. And those seasons changed.

Friendships forged in fire that I never dreamed wouldn’t be there, dissolved. Not that I couldn’t call at any moment for anything – but they are not the same as they once were. And then new seasons began – new jobs, the season of marriage and children, more new jobs, a new home, aging parents, kids growing way too fast, more friendship changes and more life moments of exhaustion and joy. Ministry moments of overwhelming purpose and moments of more questions than answers. Divine direction as clear as Christmas, and then yet, more season changes.

Through every season change, there is a choice. There is a mourning or a celebration. The choice lies with this question: how will I respond to my current season? Will I look at each moment and each relationship with gratitude and embrace the joy and the pain? Will I take time to pause in the moment and be still? Will I rush through it pushing to the next one? Will I look for the wisdom to be gleaned and the joy to be found? Will I follow the Divine direction in each moment of the season or just blaze my own path of destruction and defeat? Will I remember the passage “all things work for the good of those who love Him (God)”? In the many days where I want to choose to hide under the covers and pretend the day is not going to happen, what will my choice be?

Can there be both mourning and celebration in sync with one another? Can we mourn the moments of days past and celebrate the moments to come – all while mourning and celebrating our present? Is it easier to find ourselves secretly mourning and publicly celebrating? The changing of seasons produces so much – from fall to winter we see dead leaves, darkness, coldness. These dead leaves are a necessity to bring forth the life of trees and plants to arrive during the transition from winter to spring. And, of course, the fruit to be bore – the moments of rest on the land and in the garden. Every season building upon the last. Every season bringing a new set of beauty – but the dead must fall off first. If we try to hold the dead leaves on the tree, we will never experience the beauty of the next season. And there will definitely be beauty – and it will be there whether we acknowledge it or not.

Today, look at your existing season. Count the joys and acknowledge the struggles. Find the wisdom and the truth. Make moments to pause and take in the scenery, because one thing is for sure – it is definitely going to change and you may not ever know when or how.