Seasons of Life

Just as the summer heat finally begins to sink into my bones, the chill of fall sets in.  I hear of back-to-school activities simmering around me, and remember the anticipation that always accompanied this time of year.  I loved school, everything about school.  September brought with it the untarnished hope of new semesters and yet-to-be-filled notebooks.  I loved the smell of clean textbooks, the challenges of projects ahead. 

Even though I loved school so dearly, I don’t want to go back.  I don’t find myself perusing continuing education pamphlets or dragging out my old yearbooks.  I loved school while I was in the school season of life.  And now that the early parenthood season is upon me, I love early parenthood.  I love the similarly untarnished hope of these little new creations in my care, the yet-to-be-filled blank slates staring back at me (although I do admit their slates are not quite as blank as I expected – the Lord has imprinted them with strong natures that are oftentimes unyielding to the press of nurture).  I love the smell of clean babies, and the challenges of upcoming developmental stages.  I love that each season of the year is now accompanied by new behaviors, new lessons learned. 

Of course, there are elements of academia that I miss, such as the duty – or rather, the freedom – to lose myself in books of literature and poetry for hours on end.  I currently don’t have hours of my day free to devote to such pursuits, but I do have a minute here or there.  And recently, I had the pleasure of coming across a beautiful little poem by the late Kim Waller that artfully captured the season of fall as it settles across the Connecticut hillside.  Growing up in California, I don’t recall this time of year being associated with changing leaves or browning hills, but now as a New Englander, even creation itself seems to shed a few layers to prepare for the buckling down ahead.   

Across the general green

some yellow leaves drift down,

inscribing random scratches

on the dying face of summer.

Not yet the reddening patch,

not yet the rampant inflammation

that swells from hill to hill

and undoes creation.

Just as this poem testifies to the transient nature of physical seasons, so to do the seasons of life come to an end.  I chose to close the book, so to speak, on my years of schooling, and the Lord opened the book of parenthood to me.  But that season, too, will one day end.  A friend reminded me this weekend about the importance of grasping the fact that our children are simply on loan to us from the Lord.  He is the one who created them, who gave them life, and who holds their eternal destiny in His Hands.  I have been given the privilege of caring for them for a season.  I must remember that each day with them is a gift from above.  Whether today was in the early spring of our time together, or in the last days of winter, I do not know.  But just as the Lord brings the flowers up from the earth, or causes the leaves to fall from the trees, He is in control of my life, and the lives of my children.  “To everything there is a season / A time for every purpose under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).