Favorite Season

I love fall!
I think my favorite part of fall is that I get to wear boots, leggings, scarves, hats, and cardigans.
I do love the pretty colors in the trees and how everything seems to start to settle down in nature.
My wardrobe over the years as become one of many layers.
I wear my cotton T-Shirts year round under layers of sweaters or cardigans.
I wear my shorter knit skirts and dresses with leggings.
I love fall!  I love this season of the year best of all!
My times are in Your hand... Psalms 31:15
Season.  The word season from the Latin world serere - to sow, and satio - sowing.  With a later derivative in Old French seson
Sowing, to sow, season.
A season of sowing.  As I looked more deeply into this "season" of life and the meaning, I ran across the origin of the word and that put pause on my writing.  Pause long enough to let the imagery of sowing seep into and blend in my mind with my understanding of season.
To sow...
As I pictured each season with its heat, warmth, coolness, cold; I also pictured sowing.  Do the ones who tend gardens year round sow seeds year round?  Yes, they do.  They sow spring seeds, summer seeds for summer and fall harvests.  They sow fall and winter seeds for winter and spring harvests.  Always with the intention to harvest.


To sow, to scatter seeds among the earth with the intention of a harvest.  To secure a future for a harvest the seeds must be scattered and buried in the earth at the the right time, in the right place, in darkness.
Read Matthew 13:3-8
During this time in my life the season is changing and so are the seeds.
About a week ago I had some girl friends over to my house for a Bible study that we started and there was such a diversity among us.  The seasons in life of each girl was how we were most diverse.
My Titus women friends whose kids are grown and now they are raising grand babies or the one who has lost a child and has an ailing husband.  My new mommy friends with their toddlers or are pregnant now.  There's also the friends that are in the same season of life that I am.
So I started noticing and one day it hit me...
right about the time I went to my yearly doctor visit...
I'm no longer in the season I used to be in.
The breastfeeding book lay on the doctors counter.  Pregnant women in the waiting room. Questions about my intentions of growing a family.
I suddenly started feeling as if a door was closing on a part of my life, as if it was not a part I could walk through again.
I thought about my 20's, going to college, getting married, having my family.
My 30's are going to be coming to a close soon and I've been raising my kids.
Back to college.
Back to work
Career change.
Dealing with middle school stuff of one of my children.
Learning to lean into God and press into my husband too.
Taking care of my health and putting some focus on me.


So much has changed since my twenties.  I fight it sometimes.
I still want to adopt a girl into our family.
I still think I'm 26 apparently as I wrote it on a doctors form.
I am now at a time in my life that I'm sure many women or moms do come too.
What now?


That door is shutting.
That season is changing.
What now?


Embrace it!


Sure I've kept some of their baby toys in the attic, outfits that were precious to me but I'm letting go.
I'm no longer holding on.
When did the letting go happen?


This morning as our kids were pulling on jackets and grabbing up backpacks they were happily bouncing off to wait for the bus.
I stood across the kitchen from my husband and smiled.
My boyfriend, my high school sweetheart, my lover, my friend...
I asked "Can you believe we made those guys?"
I'm in awe all of the sudden, in a whole new way, by the miracles before me.
The love of my life smiled, stepped across the room and took me in his arms.


It's a miracle how two makes one.  How two become one.
I'm approaching a new season, not quite letting go of the old one yet.
I'm still harvesting from the last season but it's time to sow new seeds for the future.
To clean out the mess of a life's garden to make room for new growth.
To prepare for the new season, the next harvest, a future.
In their shell of darkness, each "seed", each moment and decision,  I plant for the future has a life waiting, ready to grow.  Ready for it's time to emerge and itself produce.


The new season of me in this life is leading to something beautiful, I can feel it.


To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven Ecc 3:1