Wait in the Weight

The winter months have me longing for the sunshine. I remember how, every year, I take for granted leaving the house without a jacket when radiator season finally expires. Seasons do that, don’t they? They compel us to recall what once was when we find ourselves without. Seasons of lack help us to appreciate seasons of abundance more fully. We remember where we’ve been. We realise that the tangible experience we struggled through was something put in place to teach us. Seasons of sorrow provide us deeper laughter in our seasons of joy. We remember what pain once felt like and how good it feels not to feel it today.

You know, if we could eavesdrop on some of the conversations which God has about us, we’d laugh in disbelief like Sarah did. We’d question how our ashes could ever be made into something beautiful, despite the fact that’s what we’re promised. Seasons have a funny way of doing that, though. They lull us into believing that where we are now is where we’ll always be.

I’ve had more of those seasons than I’m happy admitting. I remember, for example, being 25 and single and thinking that meant I’d been left ‘on the shelf’. I was twenty-five. I was nowhere near old. My friends just happened to couple up young and that’s when comparison came in and stole my joy too quickly for me to run after it. Invitations to engagement parties, hen do’s and weddings only left me wondering if it would ever be my turn. So I sought to find my own way and hopped from one relationship to another throughout my early twenties, hoping that a massage of my ego would tame the flame I held for ‘to have and to hold’. Of course, it didn’t. All those temporary teasers taught me was that I didn’t know best. Every single time. They taught me to trust God even when I didn’t understand.

It’s hard to understand grace when all you can see is your sin which separates you from it.

I think that sometimes we’ve got to almost ignore how real our present feels in order to take hold of God’s promises for our future. I don’t mean to suggest we make ourselves void of emotion, not at all. Emotions are important. But remember what I said earlier? If we could listen in on some of what God has in store for our lives, I don’t think we’d believe Him. I think that’s why these seasons are put in place for us to walk through. We’re just asked to faithfully put one foot in front of the other and step from darkness into light.

Just because we’re piling layer upon layer now to brave the cold, that doesn’t mean we’re never going to feel the sun’s rays on our faces again. The reality of your present doesn’t negate the possibilities in your future. And in God, those possibilities are endless. So trust Him, not the season He’s given you to walk in.