As I write, the air is cool and my maple in the front yard glows a fire orange. It’s Fall. I love everything about Fall—the cooling temperatures, the changing colors, the promise that the cold season is coming. It’s in the cold season, when the snow flies, that time slows and I exhale. And so my children wait with me. They wait in anticipation for the first snow of the year and another change in seasons.
I’m thankful seasons change. I’m thankful hard seasons in life change. Life moves—it doesn’t stay stagnant or motionless. Sometimes though, in the unseen parts of my heart, emotions feel stuck. Hard emotions that are difficult to shake, impossible to forget, and sometimes if I am honest—I don’t want to forget. We observe grief. There are seasons we feel it more keenly than others, but the reality is we all walk it’s path at some point. We all feel pain. And so we walk a tension that just doesn’t feel quite right. We walk feeling something a miss.
This world has a lot a miss doesn’t it? Broken relationships, injustice, hate, disease and death. There is much that would weigh heavy on a heart. These are just the big picture things, the hit the news and fire-alarm things. But there are things that go unseen. Our everyday lives are far from tidy. I choose to focus on my fire-orange tree in the front yard because it’s peaceful. My reality however is that even as I type, I can’t see my floor through the flood of toys around me. There are are little hands—busy hands, that are everywhere. They work their magic on our home and in turn my sanity. I’m thankful for these busy little people even if life right now is not tidy.
The truth is it is a far-cry from tidy. That’s OK. In the seasons of life that are messy, when the emotions get uncomfortably stuck, I am learning to ask a new question. How do I steward the hard well—the things I can’t change? How do I steward pain?
You see—I love my fire-orange tree. What you don’t see in looking at it is that it was planted in a season of grief. We planted it shortly after my father’s death. Every year it grows, changes, and becomes more beautiful. This maple reminds me that there is a season of beautiful that co-exists with the hard. I walk in the tension of the now but hope for and long for the not yet—a time when everything that is so a miss will be made right. I won’t make it right. Only God can—and will, make it right.
Christ was our supreme example. We won’t be able to walk perfectly as Christ did, but as Christ suffered, we are told we will suffer also. Seasons of pain shouldn’t surprise us. In suffering, in pain—we can walk well. We can walk mindful of God. Peter writes in 1 Peter 2 that this is a gracious thing, to endure sorrow—most notably unjust sorrow. Why? Because Christ walked the road of a suffering servant also. He stewarded pain before a watching world and we are to walk in his footsteps. Christ entrusted himself to His father and like-wise we should entrust ourselves into the hands of a gracious, merciful savior. In so doing, we are not alone—we will never be alone. We can take comfort that Christ champions on our behalf. Christ shepherds our hearts and he oversees our souls. In the soil of hearts that were dark, he plants hope.
We can steward seasons of pain because we walk not as ones without hope—but as ones full of it. We walk in the confidence that while we weather seasons of pain now, we know they are just that—seasons. Pain is for but a little while—heaven will be everlasting. God enables us to steward the here-and-now well.
"And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you." 1 Peter 5:10
