This Is Just a Season
Editor’s Note: We know that, for some, your current “season” might include a variety of complex challenges requiring additional help or counsel. In such cases, please reach out to professionals or other support members in your own community.
She sat across from me in the food court as I scarfed down a Chick-fil-A biscuit and squeezed in words of anxiety between bites. I was a college freshman stressing about my spring final exams and wishing the week was already over. My college mentor offered to meet me for breakfast before an exam since it was the only free time in my busy study schedule before I left for the summer. She nodded along as I explained the woes of each one of my classes and worried that I wouldn’t make it through to next week. She then stopped me and asked me the strangest question: “Did you survive your fall final exams?”
I thought back to that week five months ago and honestly couldn’t remember much. I knew I had been stressed, especially since it was my first finals week as a college student. Yet I had turned in every paper and passed every test (with only one all-nighter under my belt). “Yes, I made it through,” I answered. “And I even got the GPA I was hoping for.”
“Finals week is just a season of your life,” she wisely admonished me. “The pressure you’re feeling right now will not last forever. In fact, you probably won’t remember this week five years from now and maybe not even by next semester’s finals.”
Though college finals week seems like a trivial example now, my mentor taught me an important lesson in spiritual maturity. Just as the weather changes from summer to fall to winter to spring, we will walk through various seasons in life. Finals week seemed overwhelming to nineteen-year-old me, but I have faced much harder seasons in newlywed life, newborn days, family illness, job transitions, and more. Still, the lesson from my college mentor has stayed with me: this is just a season.
I remember nursing my daughter to sleep one night feeling completely overwhelmed as a new mother. My husband and I had both made major career transitions, we had moved across the state, and I was dealing with my mother’s cancer diagnosis. As I sat in the near dark, clinging to my four-month-old, I felt like I would never resurface. I would never adjust to working from home. I would never feel comfortable in our new house. I would never have security about my mom’s health. The pressures of those few months were heaped on my shoulders. Yet in that moment of hopelessness, God reminded me of my mentor’s words to give me hope—this is just a season.
Looking up and looking back
Maybe you’re facing a difficult season because of health issues, life changes, spiritual dryness, or physical and emotional stress. Maybe it’s lasted a week or a year. Maybe you’re like me that night in my daughter’s nursery rocker, feeling you’ll never escape the weight of stress in that moment. But you will, because this is just one season God has ordained for your spiritual growth.
What can we do in those seasons of life that seem overwhelming and hopeless? We look to Jesus, who faced pressures we could never imagine. “Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2).
Just as Jesus was motivated by the joy that was set before him, we can endure because of the joy set before us. While the world may boast a “light at the end of the tunnel,” we as Christians have a more secure hope than a vague glow. “[God] has caused us to be born again to a living hope . . . In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials” (1 Peter 1:3, 6). Even though we face trials now, we rejoice because we know of the inheritance gained at the end of this life.
We can also look back and see how God has sustained us through difficult seasons in the past. “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old” (Psalm 77:11). Looking back to a tough second year of marriage, I remember how God grew my husband and me closer because of relational strain. Looking back to my first year of motherhood, I remember God’s lessons of humility and self-sacrifice. Looking back to the seemingly endless pandemic season, I remember God teaching me that he is faithful to his promises in every season. These dry seasons are hard, but they are never fruitless.
This is God’s season
As I prepare for hard seasons in the future—welcoming a baby home through adoption, making school decisions for my children, etc.—I take courage that God will use those seasons as well to grow me as a mother and wife but, most importantly, as his daughter.
This season will not last forever. As the Lord wills, one day my children will grow up, and I’ll once again sleep through the night. One day, I won’t have to stand close to the playset in case my son tries to toddle off the edge. One day, my daughter will be able to help me with chores. But the fact that this season of “little years” will end is not my hope. My hope is in the God who uses each season of life to bring about my good and his glory.
This is just a season, and because of who God is and what he has done, it can be a good season, no matter how difficult it is. “This is the [season] that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).
