Recently I passed by a house already decorated for Christmas. While I too love Christmas, I found it sad that bright reds and greens of Christmas were invading the fantastic colors of fall. You see, fall is one of my favorite seasons with its crisp air, pumpkin pies and the colors, orange, yellow, red and deep purples adorning the tree's preparing for their long winters nap. Fall is a time for apple gathering and sipping hot cinnamon apple cider after raking up the fallen leaves. Fall needs no adornment. To skip right over into Christmas is to miss the enjoyment of the here and now of fall. Fall is the preparation for winter and winter needs Christmas. The leaves are gone and the trees are bare and the Christmas colors make winter come alive.

While I was musing this, I felt the tug of the Holy Spirit on my heart. "Why don't you enjoy the season you are in?" You see, I just went through a divorce. I struggled and fought, prayed and fasted for my marriage. I went through condemnation, failure and depression. None of that stopped the divorce. Lately, I had been well ... not really enjoying my new role as a single-mother. I desired to be married again. Not to anyone in particular. I was just missing the companionship. But then it was God who reminded me I wasn't really happy when I was married and that I never really had a companion during the marriage! It was a situation I have chosen to cover with love and forgiveness, but in the end it was God who told me to let it go. I had hung onto that marriage way past its season. In my case, it would have been ungodly to remain in this marriage. I had become like Lot’s wife and became paralyzed. I kept looking back.

It was time to embrace this new life of freedom He has given me. It was time to breathe the freshness of His healing power and rediscover the person He created me to be, not this broken person who has been watching the beauty pass by while not partaking in life. The life He died to give me to live abundantly. "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10 KJV).

I am in the “fall season” of my life. Old things are passing away. But oh, the colors around me! After fall comes winter and after winter comes spring, one of my other favorite seasons because the promise of renewal and the new growth that happens right before my eyes.

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. —Isaiah 43:18-19 (KJV)

But, I cannot skip winter to get to spring and I would not want to. Winter is cold and gray, but in it is hope, hope for a better future with the birth of our savior and that spring is coming with the hope of our savior rising again. Winter doesn’t last forever even though sometimes it feels like it.

You may be going through your fall season today, where things are dying off; I pray the Lord helps you to enjoy the colors. Or you may be in your winter and it is cold and gray; I pray he gives you hope and the realization you do have a savior to get you through with rejoicing that spring is coming! You will rise again! Whatever your situation today, I encourage you to rejoice, lift up your head! It is a new season. There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

I pray that the Lord helps you see the beauty in the current situation and enjoy all of the seasons of your life!

Copyright © by Deborah Young Share