Today's Lesson:  You will age.

This past weekend, April 12, I attended a ladies retreat.  I, along with 5, 000 other members of the female species, mostly over the age of 50, sat Friday night through Saturday mid-day in cinema style floppy chairs in front of great woman telling great stories of God's greatness.  Speakers included Lysa Terkeurst (https://lysaterkeurst.com), Rosaria Butterfield (https://rosariabutterfield.com), and 90's Christian girl band sensation, Point of Grace (pointofgrace.net).

I was inspired.
I was uplifted.
Mostly, I felt old.

Point of Grace members who were fashion and beauty icons in my early adulthood years ... are my age.  Lysa Terkeurst is my age.  Rosaria Butterfield is just a smidge older.  I fall into the category that those I rub shoulders with, much younger in age than myself, consider the "older women" of faith.  When did that happen?

When I was a young Mom, learning the ropes and feeling as if every one for which I grabbed was fraying at the ends, I would hear these sages who are now my age whisper promises that seemed like fairy tales:  "These days go by so fast".  Humph!, thought I, of little patience and lack of sleep.  These days linger and lag and leave me feeling weathered by storms of life lessons for which I was totally unprepared.

Then, time passed.

Along came baby number two, and despite a four year track record of embracing a job description called Mother, I still had lessons to learn.  Time still seemed to tick through mud-covered clocks that took too long to circle to the next hour.

Then, time passed.

Along came unexpected baby number three and life ... changed.  It had now been eight years since my role as Mother defined who I was and who I'd come to embrace.  It was a sweet time.  It was a sacred time - mostly.  Despite feedings in the wee hours of the night, changing of diapers that were endless, and demands made from three people in different stages of life, I embraced the changes.

However, embracing change and noticing the swift pace of time that proceeds are two different things.

I'm pretty sure that no one walking on the planet gets out alive.  Intellectually, I know that.  So why am I shocked to see grey hair, older adult daughters, and hands that now look like my Mothers belong to me?  Time has a quick pace.

Measure your life in seasons.  Seasons change, dear friend.  Singleness.  Early Motherhood.  Menopause.  Whatever your life season you find yourself in is simply just that - a season.  The next season waits eagerly at the timeline awaiting it's introduction.  We can deny, prolong, despise and dread an upcoming season but that won't change the inevitability of it's coming ... and passing.  Seasons come.  Seasons go.  Trying to prolong your time in one season for fear of jumping into the next season robs you.  Oh the ways robbery comes!

Just in case you were wondering, our lives are a mist, a vapor, grass.  Not my words but the words of a Spirit-inspired Psalmist.  But don't let your heart get troubled and for heavens sake, don't freak out! It may seem predictive to say, but the best is yet to come.  Those who love Jesus are promised a place that He has gone and already prepared for us.  This place will be our new home.  This will be place where seasons never pass and therefore never leaving us with a sense of longing for the good ol' days.  It's coming.  We don' have to understand.  We just have to believe.

Put some perspective into this season of your life.  It will pass.  A new season awaits.  In the end, each season has joys that await you, building character and wisdom for that season in which you will find yourself being part of the club I now belong ...  an "older woman" of faith.  I will wear the crown proudly.

Aging and adjusting my crown,
Christina

Yesterday I read a well-written and reflective blog by a friend who is facing a Season.  I've met with so many women this past year with the same issue of entering into or coming out of a Season.  They - Seasons - are inevitable.  You can try to hide, deny, ignore, run away from it's impending presence but facts and truth collide in the shape of a Season.

If you live in Oklahoma, perhaps a weather illustration is not a good one since Winter resembles very little of itself and puts on the alluded guises of Spring and Summer.  But ... for the rest of us ... Seasons make sense.    I know that when September arrives in my beloved Vienna, it's going to be the optimal time of year affectionately known as Altes Damen Wetter (Old Ladies Weather):  cool in the morning and evenings but warm in the day.  Perfect.  Upon the ending of September I brace myself for the fleeting Autumn and know that my down coat needs to be put in the batters box because soon and very soon Winter will make his debut ... and stay ... usually for a long, long time.    But come April"ish" ... I get itching to pull out lighter jeans and dispose of the fleece uniforms I've been wearing for months.  July and August I suck it up and deal with the warmth inside my apartment that has no AC because I know ... this is for a Season.  September is coming.

Seasons change that which was our reality.  Seasons take time to mourn.  Seasons should cause us to reflect.  Seasons come and go ... and come and go ... until we meet Jesus.

I find myself in a Season that I really don't know how to define in terms that are either comprehensible or proper for a good girl like to me to put in black and white.  I know the title of this Season:  Menopause.  Other brave women who I now respect more than most Rock Stars, Brain Surgeons or Barista's in any coffee shop worth it's grinds encourage me that this Season will end ... and I will survive.  I have my doubts.  But I trust their words.

As a young Mom, I was so insecure.  I was afraid most of the time.  I was so afraid that what I did wouldn't count.  I was afraid I'd get something so wrong in the raising of my beautiful offspring that they'd never recover.  I was afraid that they would "pick up" on things that I did, said, believed - oh yes believed - and have the same struggles I did.  Fear was a constant companion.  I loved God.  I learned His Word.  I tried my darndest to "get it right".  I rarely shook the Fear.  Until ...

Until that day when God used Anxiety to break the Fear Season and show me a Healing Season.  The good news is that the Healing Season still continues!  If you know Jesus and read God's Word which is alive and powerful and full of good stuff and relevant and flat out inspires and thoughtful and challenging and seeps into all the soft spots in your heart - but more importantly into the hard spots that crave attention and then the Word speaks ... with loud speakers ... then... THEN you will always have a Healing Season.  Always.

As a not-so-young Mom, I'm not insecure.  I'm not afraid - most of the time.  I am not afraid that I what I did didn't count.  I'm not afraid that what I got wrong they won't recover from.  I'm not afraid that they picked up on anything I did, said, or believed and suffer from my same struggles.  Fear is no longer a constant companion.  I love God.  I am learning His Word.  I'm not trying any more to get it right.  I have shaken Fear.

Sound arrogant? It would if I were speaking from the vantage point of being my own Healer.  But I'm not!  I can confidently say these things because the Spirit of God's Wisdom has opened my eyes - through many Seasons - to show me that when I make Seasons self-focused I will always fear.

Let me illustrate by using this current Season of my life:  Menopause.  Self-focus navigation tells me that I must find the right doctor to give me the right meds, hormone replacement therapy, food lists, creams, Valium to make it through.   Self-focus navigation urges me and often shames me into gathering all the information I can to be well-informed.  Missing vital information could harm me.  Self-focus navigation keeps everything in this Season all about what I can do, should do, should not do, could do, must do until I'm just flat worn out.  It's not enough to carry the weight (literally) of this Season but I must also carry the burden of the exit of the Season.

It's stupid. It's stupid to ask Winter to be responsible for bringing in Spring.  It's stupid to rely on ourselves to navigate our own Seasons.

We look to God, who is wise and who's thoughts are way higher than ours and we breath and we calm down and we put down our banner that says "Me" on it ... and we sit.  We sit because we are tired.  We sit because it's in our weakness that God, who is strong, speaks to us in soft tones because we've become overwhelmed.  It's in those soft tones we feel empowered.  And then when we hear enough in the soft tones, we get up and we do what He told us to do and we navigate from a new place that takes "Me" of the top of the organizational flow chart and puts "God" in my place.

If He tells me to go to a doctor, I go.  If He tells me to gather information, then I gather.  But I don't do anything other than what He tells me.  If I hear nothing, I don't sit in shame and guilt.  There is no place for shame in guilt in the lap of my Father.  Hearing nothing may mean I need to just sit awhile.  I sit until I hear and then I go and do ... and do with more confidence that this is a Season who has an Author and it's author is not me.

Walking in a Season,
Christina

This blog was born out of a few resources you mind find helpful:
The well-written blog by my friend
Dr. Henry Cloud on Seasons