These past two months have been such a season of growth for me. From where I am now, I can say it was good; but I can’t say that I always felt that way. If I am being honest, I spent the majority of the season hating it. Jesus was doing a real work in my heart; weeding through all the toxic parts, to make room for the good things He wants to sow. But there’s a time after the weeding out, before the reaping, where it felt so dark and hopeless. There was an emptiness, a void, where the counterfeit affections of performance and people pleasing once lived. And while I knew, deep down, that Jesus had to rid my heart of these things to make more room for His love, it didn’t make the loneliness or void any less painful.
So many of my prayers these last two months have been cries and pleas. Pleas to move on. Move out of the season. All I could see was the struggle in the season. All I felt was emptiness and loneliness. But what I am learning, is that every season has struggles. Every season has struggles, but you can’t see those struggles when you’re an outsider looking in. I prayed for a rescue because I wanted a joyful season. I wanted a season full of God’s love. But in the midst of my lamenting about the season I was in, I missed the strengths of my own season.
You can’t control what season God walks you through. You can’t control when it happens or what it looks like. But what I am learning, is that you can choose what you say about the season. And what you say about a season, what words you give to it, determines how you experience it. For so much of my season, I called it lonely, empty, a dry spell. And so that’s what it became. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the thing is, although I can’t change the season, I can change what I say about it. So these days, I am calling it beautiful. I am calling it a season of renewal. A season of God actively pouring out His love to me in new and personal ways. And choosing to see this season in this new light, has totally, completely, changed the way I’m experiencing it. It doesn’t feel hopeless anymore. It feels full of possibility and opportunity.
Writing has always been a powerful way for me to make sense of life happening around me. And I think now, I am realizing why: words give me the opportunity to positively shape the way I see and make sense of the world unfolding. It allows me to use words to shape whatever season I’m walking through in a positive light, and as a result, actually seize the strengths of that season. And the words that I give to the event, feeling, whatever it may be, so clearly affect the way I experience it. When I write, I am reminded of the beautiful moments in every day life. And writing has been especially important on the race for me, because it is not always easy and some days it is hard to see the good. But when I write, somehow, the silver lining appears, the good surfaces, and I am filled with a little more hope than before.
So these days, I am choosing my words carefully. I’m believing that this is a season of renewal and refinement. A season of Jesus filling the void that I’ve filled with counterfeit affections for so long. I’m believing Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. I’m believing His words because I am seeing them transform my life.
