Seasonal Something.

Lately I've been really antsy for Spring. I know family and friends up north can relate. I just find this time of year to be really unsavory. Everyone's tired of the cold, wearing winter clothes has lost it's appeal, and all I really want to do is lay on the beach. I mean, is that so much to ask??

Soon enough, spring will be here so I can ditch the coats and boots and a day at the beach or pool will be feasible. And it will be fabulous. But then, only a few short months later, something awful happens. That something is called August. If you've never had the joy of a Charleston August, you may not be able to understand. Now some can relate, but you won't be able to appreciate the full extent of it until you take a shower, dry off, get dressed, etc., etc., only to go outside, even if only to your car, and feel like you never dried off from your shower. That is to say that August is the most dreadfully humid, most suffocatingly hot time around here. And I love summer just as much as the next beach-loving, daiquiri-drinking girl, but let me tell you something: when it's August in the low country, all I can think about is crisp 60 degree air and bright autumn foliage. And it'll come, usually more sluggishly than I would like, and it's great...for a little while. But what comes next? Winter! Which is great around Christmas, but then I'm back to where I started, wanting to lay by the pool.

Are you catching the common thread here? Life is nothing but a bunch of seasons, each with their own unique wonders and challenges. And just like the seasons we appreciate here on the East Coast, life's seasons are fleeting and cyclical. Just as much as I'm antsy for Spring, I'm antsy for life. What's the next step? What's the next new, exciting thing? I think a lot of young married couples go through this. Is the next step a move? Is it kids? Some other kind of new endeavor? I've been wondering all of these things lately. But you know what I realized? It's time to appreciate the now for the now. The seasons will come, and they will come naturally. I think God is using my antsiness to teach me to appreciate what I have right now and rely on Him to usher in the next season in our lives in His time, not ours.

A few Sundays ago our Pastor asked something to effect of "Do you find that you're worn out all the time? Could this be because you're relying on your own strength over God's?" This really hit home for me. I'm a planner and there's nothing I enjoy more than planning/list-making/daydreaming about the future. There's nothing wrong with that, but sometimes I get so stuck on it, that I forget to enjoy the season that I'm in right now. And it does wear me out because I tend to rely too much on myself and what I have planned.

Seasons will change. That's inevitable. And sometimes they come with a few surprises. Heck, we got snow this year! It's time to embrace the season you're in and look for what God's trying to teach you. At the end of my life, I'd hate to look back and realized that all I did was wait for the next big thing, when big things were happening all along, I was just too distracted to see them.