I couldn’t sleep. 3:30 and wide awake. I laid there for a while trying to will the sleep to come. It is not lost on me that for months I wished for the opportunity to sleep. And here it is and my body is literally rejecting it. But the truth is, I couldn’t quiet my mind.
I’ve always been acutely aware of seasons. You know, those moments in time that define you — a before and after, a then and now. Chapters. Sometimes you know you’re in a season while it’s happening. Sometimes you don’t realize it until it’s ending. But we’re in constant movement. From one season to another. Evolving. Changing. Growing. Learning.
If you’re lucky, you become a sponge. You soak it all in knowing how temporary everything really is. Good. Bad. All of it. Temporary.
But changing seasons, even welcomed change, always feels especially bittersweet to me. A beginning. An ending. Excitement and sadness completely entangled, impossible to separate.
The truth is, sometimes we resist that change. We cling to comfort long past its expiration, filled with discontented hope. I’ve learned that God will always move you in those moments. When you can’t choose, the choice always comes. One way or another.
I think about the final weeks of high school often. Big moments wrapped in ordinary life. We knew everything was about to change, approaching the seasons end like a much anticipated television series finale. Eager to see how it would all play out. Sad it was ending. A definitive chapter coming to a neat and tidy end. Pivotal.
None of us chose to close that chapter. It closed for us, launching us into the next season of life. But seasonal change is more complex as we grow. We’re tricked into believing we have some say, that we’re the author of this story. And relinquishing control when you’ve been fooled into believing it’s all up to you feels impossible.
I know how lucky it makes a person that they were gifted a sweet season that feels painful to close. And I know how terribly unthinkable it feels to make the choice to close it. There is no guidebook. There is no definitive beginning and end to seasons in adulthood like we had as children. Our childhood was seasonal change with training wheels. And now that balancing act feels a lot riskier.
It offers me great comfort to know that despite how unsettling a season of change might feel to us, nothing is a surprise to God.
So if you’re joining me in this phase of life, where you feel like big choices are up to you — when you feel like you’re being lead to big change, let me leave you with this.
Thank God that nothing comes as a surprise to Him; he knows the plans he has for you — plans for your welfare and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11
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