Seasons Are Necessary to Heal… Hello readers, I hope this weekend musing gives you inspiration, if not a few smiles as well! Let me know your thoughts, I cherish each and every one of them, and take them to heart.

At 9 years old, I grew up most of my life in the frozen tundra of northern Wisconsin. As a kid I loved the big snow—the more of it the better! The 50+ degrees below zero—and that’s not counting the wind factor—not so much! We hunkered down because we knew that kind of cold can be deadly; better to respect it than push your luck. I’d say to my dad, “I don’t like this cold, I just want the snow.” He would laugh and say, everything has its season and God does it on purpose. Really—so I said “God can change his mind, right?” That got another laugh, and then dad’s proverbial wisdom: “this is winter’s way of healing the land.” OK, dad, I don’t quite get it but I trust you.

As a grown-up I often think of those seasons of cold, then the beautiful fall colors on the trees, and spring which ‘up north’ was mostly a season of mud, but then came summer—oh blessed summer where the resort was filled with people a/k/a new boyfriends, swimming and skiing, cleaning fish, etc. Summer up there did not last long; we could get a frost in August and twice we had snow in July and my dad held the calendar while we took a picture of it!

Seasons are important, for instance, snow-melt is better than a hard rain as it soaks in. Here in the Arizona desert, the snow-melt from our mountains is as precious as diamonds. Then there is that cold-snap, some are short, others like Wisconsin are long, but during those times our botany sleeps and then prepares to wake-up in spring, nourished like the mama bear in her den. Even good wine needs a cold snap!!

All this reminds me of the seasons of our lives. Going back to my dad’s wisdom, I realize how right he was. The same is true of us. We all need specific seasons to heal us, to unearth the stony burdens embedded in the “soil of our hearts” as a friend of mine who writes for Proverbs 31 Ministries says it—I think she is spot-on.

We can try to avoid the dreariness of tough times, preferring instead those giddy days of laughter, sunshine and hopefulness, but our lives just don’t play out that way. God leads us into each season, bringing us through stuff—like suffering, pain, and other things that leave us wondering what God is up to?! Yet, as we come through all these and took an honest look back, we would see the healing that God has given us.

King David’s wise son, Solomon, has much to tell us about seasons. I love Ecclesiastes, especially chapter three where it says, “For everything that happens in life—there is a season, a right time for everything under heaven.”  For me, this means that our human experience unfolds over all seasons, not just our favorite ones. Solomon goes on to say that life is a like a passage through various times: a time to be born and to die, to weep and to laugh, to keep silent and to speak, and then he says one of my favorites, a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together…”

I get stones, because here in Arizona we have a lot of stones, rocks, and boulders. If you have any acreage, after the monsoons you have more stones, so you rake them up again every season. Why stones—they are something God created to hold the land together. Every season turns them over, every rain washes the dirt away, they tumble and move, and as I said, we see more stones. It’s an ongoing ‘field of stones” yet, to me, I see this seasonal event as God healing the land, and wanting so much to heal us. The problem is, will we let Him?

There is no stone too big for our God, just ask his son, Jesus—He specializes in rolling stones away, including the one in front of His own tomb! So, what do we do with these seasons, how do we embrace each one that we go through knowing that we will come out on the end of it OK because God is in the season with us? Here are three ideas that came to mind:

1) Slow down, let each season do its work in your heart. Don’t try to move the boulders on your own, allow God to help you lift-move-bury-crush-whatever it takes to learn and heal through this season of your life. 2) Keep your prayer-life active 24/7. Communicate with the Lord in your prayers, he loves to hear from you and he listens and responds. Not always the way we want, but what is best for us…and 3) Ask God to take away your resistance to his healing work. You can’t do it alone, you know that, so don’t waste precious time trying. 

I know I have many heavy rocks in the “field of my heart” and some of them remind me of the hard places I have put myself in. Those rocks are something I can learn from and if I can be honest with myself, I’ll realize that I need the help of the Holy Spirit to come and till the soil of those hard spots and plant something new and beautiful in me. That is what our God does, and I think it is exactly what we all need, AMEN!