Times of transition can be good and bad.  When one is engrossed in unpleasant circumstances a nice change of pace can be just what the doctor ordered.  It breathes new life into you and lifts your spirits high making you feel as if you are on cloud nine.  At the same time, when one is entering into times of affliction, lack or any sort of substandard anything compared to what they are used to, the feelings of dread and just suffering through begins to take over.

Winter for me is not the best season.  I am seriously beginning to see why people move to warmer climates.  Over the past couple of years, winter has taken its toll on me and I grow more and more weary of it with each passing year.  Why am I talking about winter?  Because I thank God for deliverance and we are now deep in Spring once again.  Days when the trees begin to get green and lush once more; when there is a fresh breeze in the air that causes you to inhale deeply hoping to savor as much of it as you can.

I love riding with the windows down to just run errands and stuff.  I can’t help but admire God’s handiwork shown in the changing seasons.  At times like this, I can sometimes be found silently praising God that it’s not always winter.  That as long as the earth is here we have these times that transition out of the funky icky blahs of one season into the brilliantly colored warmth of the next.

Life is a lot like those transitioning seasons.  Stages, if you will, that carries you from one level to the next.  Each brings with it certain blahs, and yet each brings the brilliantly colored.  It’s just pushing through the blended, muddled messes to arrive on the other side that gets us.

I have on my balcony outside an old multi-colored faded rug that has suffered through many summers and winters.  The wear and tear on it more than shows.  For right now the shades and hues are nowhere near reminiscent of what they used to be.  The muddled colors have to go.  To breathe life back into one of my favorite reading, writing, and relaxing areas I will replace this rug in the very near future.  Its usefulness has held up and endured, but now is time for something different.

That’s what these stages do.  They bring us to something different.  If life were the same all the time; the same shade, the same level, the same this or that, the same season – one may not appreciate it as much.  Someone once said, “There is no rainbow without the rain,” to which I wholeheartedly agree, although I don’t like the rain.

Does it make me like winter any more than I do now?  Nope.  Nor, do I like trying times and circumstances, but when God brings you to a place of deliverance; a place where you can deeply inhale and breathe in the freshness of the season and take in all the new shades that brilliantly light up your life, you appreciate the new level and just thank God for seeing you through another stage of life.

No matter what season you are in, I pray that God would show you fresh colors and fresh peace, in Jesus’ name.  May His holy hand guide you and see you through.