Discerning the Season

It is eerily quiet.  That golden sun is melting down behind the cow fields and the picket fence.  The birds have built a nest on the back porch lantern and are twittering away in the sunset. The kids wore themselves out playing with their cousins and cousins’ cousins and fell dead asleep at the glorious hour of 7:30. A quiet house and the birds singing outside and all I can do is sit and soak it in with a cup of chamomile tea before life gets crazy. In 3… 2… 1…

Anyone who has moved countries (and probably cities) can tell you that the countdown doesn’t begin a week or even a month before departure.  Nope. We have 8 weeks till we leave the country and the countdown begins tomorrow.

Day 1: Mom and Sis come to help pack

Day 2: Move stuff to parents’ house

Day 3: Move us to parents’ house

Day 4: Babysit kids/ nieces 9-5

Day 5: Leave town for 9 days … Gah!! This is insane!

I won’t bore you with the rest of the 8 weeks, but the next five days alone fill me with that familiar dread of moving. Both leaving and moving are just plain terrible. I’m sure Abraham would agree.

“It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going.” Each one of us who follows God’s leading to hopes and plans in another “land” (even if it’s across town) must walk that intermediate journey of faith. The part where you’re leaving but you haven’t yet arrived.  And yet, even in the knowing that God is with us and the knowing that this is right, the leaving part is terrible.

The thing helping me in all of this terrible leaving is one thought. This season was a gift.

This house and this neighborhood were a gift from God.   And each gift in my life—whether it be proximity to family, security, predictable routine, the stage of my husband and children, neighbors, the minivan my dad let us use for the year—all of these things are but gifts from God to be stewarded for their seasons.

What if I were to really keep this in mind, regardless of the season or place?

I long to have the discernment and peace of mind to receive God’s gifts, and release them when it’s time.

If I can release each gift when its season is over, my hands (and my heart) will be open for the next gift.  If I can receive what is in front of me with gratitude and presence, I won’t be pining for some other season.

This time in the US close to family in a small city where I’m fluent in the language and culture, this has been a healing season.  A time of recovery.  A time to breathe and listen and forgive. A time to use a day planner and count on it.  A time to slow my heart rate down.  Sure, I missed our mountain community and the sense of purpose in our work.  But now it’s almost over. It’s time to release this season for things to come.

Some seasons are long and some are short.  My childrens’ baby stage (4 years between the two of them) felt like forever.  Looking back it still feels like forever! (Contrary to what all those ladies say about it flying by).  It seems so long that I can barely recall life before my children. Those 4 years felt eternal.  But one day… I woke up and they were gone.  I had two preschoolers in the blink of an eye. The baby season was but a season.

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.”(Ecclesiastes 3:1)

A mentor of ours, Dary, would have us open our hands upward and release the things that were worrying or controlling us. Only then, once our hands were empty, would Dary have us ask the Holy Spirit what He wanted to place in them instead. It was meaningful as a single world traveler, and its meaningful now as a global mama and wife.

I need to that every day.

I need the discernment to know when its time to release and when it’s time to receive the gifts a new season has to offer.