What Are You Missing In The Seasons Of Your Life?

Living in my corner of our beautiful world, I get to experience the changing seasons.

• I love the lazy, gentle beauty of summer
• I’m exhilarated by the crisp mornings, riotous leaf colors, and deepening blue skies of fall
• I thrill to the sparkling, blinding whiteness of winter’s snow
• My heart awakens anew with the first flowers peeking through the melting snow and the fresh emerald greenness of spring

Life has seasons, too.

And with those seasons come extraordinary beauty, fun, laughter, pain, joy, tears, and thanksgiving. It’s been said that “everything on earth has its own time and its own season.”

Photo by Marc Schulte on Unsplash

When I was a young girl, I yearned to be a grown-up, to be able to drive a car, to have a job, to get married, to be a mom, to be independent.

When I was a young mom, I yearned to have time to myself without my children tugging at me, to be able to work on projects uninterrupted, to travel, to attend a Bible study or reading group, to enjoy uninterrupted visits with my friends, to enjoy time with my husband…alone.

Yearning, yearning, yearning.

In that yearning, I missed out on the now — the present. I missed the opportunity to glimpse the extraordinary gifts hidden in each day, in each season.

Photo by Hudson Hintze on Unsplash

It all comes down to seasons.

As moms, we can’t “do it all” or “have it all.” Something always has to give to make room for something else. There are choices we have to make each day about how we allocate the precious 24 hours we’ve been given. And those choices are often dictated by our season of life.

There is a season when all you do is change dirty diapers, feed babies, trip over toys, wipe noses,  and survive on minuscule minutes of sleep. There will come the season when you feel like all you do is drive the family taxi. Maintaining the family schedule takes the abilities of the best project manager or flight controller. They got nothing on you, girlfriend!

You cheer wildly when your child gets that special award. You watch with joy and admiration at all the hard work they put in to memorize their lines and say them without faltering. There are the days when you freeze in the stadium, sweat in the bleachers, and develop a permanent case of “dead end” from watching all your kids games. But you wouldn’t miss any of it.

Before you blink, your children are asking for the car keys and heading off on their own. Wait! Do you have a cell phone? When will you be home? Dinner tonight? And you’re off to the next college visit…and then they are off on their own. How did that happen? Yesterday they were under my feet! I know it was just yesterday!

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Seasons. In each season, remember to:

• Marvel at each breathtaking sunset
• Let your heart melt at your child’s spontaneous hug
• Listen carefully for the music in the wind
• Cheer like crazy when your son catches that touchdown
• Admire the glory of the sun ricocheting off the fresh snow
• Let your senses tingle with the crisp freshness of the autumn air
• Carefully put your toddler’s precious “flowers” in water
• Throw your head back in laughter at something hilarious each day
• Weep with your daughter over her recent breakup

Each extraordinary moment wrapped up in the ordinariness of life is too precious to waste by yearning.

This is what I learned by talking to older moms—women who were five, ten, twenty, or forty years ahead of me in this life adventure.

Photo by Genessa Panainte on Unsplash

Where are you in the seasons of life?

Are you capturing the extraordinary moments in this season? I’d love to hear about them.

Let’s join together in capturing the extraordinary moments today.

Kirsten D. Samuel
Aftershock Recovery Coach
8-week Program, Custom-paced Coaching, Remote, or In-person Sessions