Blessed and grateful
Recently I have been experiencing an overwhelming sense of gratitude, and it’s God’s provision that both headlines and underlines the list of why.
In the last few months I have reset my life. Leaving my friends and family, I moved to the opposite side of the world with a suitcase and next to zero savings.
Since then, I’ve befriended new house mates, found a new Church community, begun work in a new school and met many, many new people. All new things, all good gifts, and all provided by Him.
It hasn’t been easy, but as I look around I see how much I have been blessed.
A season to enjoy
Having recently shared these thoughts with a good friend, their response of joy came with the additional comment: “I pray you enjoy this season for however long it lasts.”
Truly, I know it was said with love and good intentions - but it got me thinking.
Why do we wonder how long a good season will last? How is a good season even defined? How is it then even possibly measured?
Interlocked seasons
Firstly, believe me, I understand in life there are seasons and with each season comes a new beginning for the next.
Secondly, I don’t suggest we refrain from the idea of enjoying the good seasons. Especially when we live through the tough seasons, the dry seasons, and the hard and painful seasons.
Rather, I’d encourage us to shift our mindset as a whole to see them as the whole.
Good and bad seasons are interlocked. Inevitable. A result of one another. And God made this so.
The human divide
So why do we divide them?
Why do we build this idea that one is better than the other and should, in a worldly ideal, occur more than the other?
It’s like deciding work is for exhaustive output and home is for replenished input but the pauses at work feel cheated and home admin bears an uncomfortable weight.
Yet positioning both realms as an intertwining of life makes the pauses reminders to breathe and home admin opportunities to invest in yourself.
Of course, naturally we won’t always see it this way and that’s humanly acceptable.
But, as we navigate life in relationship with God, the positioning of this perspective becomes more easily formed. The easier it is to form the easier it is to trust, and the easier it is to trust the easier it is to lean into.
Season navigation
What’s more: when we naturally do create this divide, we logistically then need to navigate them accordingly.
And how are you doing that?
Which season are you in now? How are you navigating it? How do you typically navigate a good season? And how do you navigate a bad?
How do you determine the two?
No good without the bad
Whichever it is, and however you are, there’s no experience of one without the other. There’s no recognition of what makes a good season without what makes the bad.
In this place there’s hurt and there’s pain, but through pain we recognise joy. A learned perspective from the bad enables an amplified one of the good.
We’re not wonderfully made only for the good seasons. Through the good and the bad, He makes it all, gives it all and leads us through.