The Seasons of Life

 

In many ways it doesn’t seem possible that it has been as long as it has. In other ways it is easy to believe that so much time has passed. Tomorrow will mark the 50^th anniversary of my graduation from high school!

 

It was a very cold and windy night as we sat on our school’s football field and waited to move our tassels. It was the day we had been looking forward to for many years. For some, it was bittersweet: high school was the pinnacle and would always be looked back on as the best time of their lives. But for most of my friends, graduation meant moving into the next phase of life and leaving childhood behind . . . and for many leaving our small town behind. After the ceremony, we attended the modest senior party planned by graduates and their parents at a hotel in a nearby city; and then we went our separate ways. 

There were reunions over the years, but many of the people on that football field never saw each other again. After twenty years of life, my core group of high school friends decided to start meeting annually for lunch . . . which we have continued for nearly thirty years; but there are so many others whose lives have never intersected with mine for fifty years.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

I think back to all the people I knew in high school, and I wish they could know me now. I think I’m a better person now and have matured, and my guess is that they have grown, too. I’m a college graduate, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a writer, and a cancer survivor. I didn’t choose a career outside the home, but I have used my God-given gifts in church ministry all of my adult life. I have had struggles and difficulties that have threatened to undo me, but God has walked beside me through it all and given me a deeper faith and a unique perspective on what following him means. I suspect that many of my former classmates also have similar stories to tell that show resilience and hope in the face of life’s challenges. 

Personally, I would have liked to avoid some of my life experiences. Not all of them were pleasant, and part of me wishes that there had been less troubles and more peace. I am one who likes things to stay the same, so every change I have been through has been hard for me. But the fifty years since I launched into adulthood have taught me that every difficulty has helped to make me who I am today. Much of my life today looks like I was hoping for on that graduation night; but I didn’t foresee everything that I have experienced. However, the hard times have better molded my character than the easier ones as God has faithfully taught me and grown me along the way. So while I wish I could erase the mistakes I’ve made, I honestly wouldn’t change any of the difficult things I have experienced . . . because they have added a depth to me that was missing at my high school graduation. 

My youngest grandchild graduated from Kindergarten a couple weeks ago. He has so much of his life ahead of him still; and all he wants to do at this point in his life is get bigger and keep up with his older siblings. If he'd listen, I would tell him to try and enjoy every step along the way . . . because all of his life experiences are designed by God to build his character and to grow him into the type of man God wants him to be someday. He won’t be there yet when he graduates from high school in twelve years; but if he keeps walking with God he will be well on his way toward a lifetime of growth and continued maturity.

Life is full of changing seasons, and we can face them with joy and faith or with fear and worry. And who we become in the end will depend on which of those paths we choose.