Hurtgen: Shed your shell

“For everything there is a season, and a time for everything under heaven.” These words, delivered in the book of Ecclesiastes and popularized in 1965 by the folk group the Byrds, remind us that not only is change the only constant in life, but we need to recognize what season we are in.

There are three broad seasons in your life. Each of these has several sub-categories. The first season is the one you are coming out of. As we eventually come out of winter, you, too, will come out of a season of life. Toddlers become children, who then become teenagers, and so on. There is a season in which you should have emerged.

Secondly, you are moving toward a season — a time that will look similar but not the same. Think of the middle-aged couple driving from one child’s event to the next. Sooner than they realize, they will still be in the car together, going only where they want. They are moving toward a season.

Thirdly, you are in the middle of a season. You are chasing babies, changing diapers or perhaps taking aging parents to doctor appointments. (You may also be changing a different type of diaper.)

Wisdom is knowing the season you’re coming out of and having both an idea and some sense of reality for what is coming in the next season while embracing and instigating the change necessary to live in the current season.

If you are not careful, the season’s past and future can be traps of a similar nature. The one ensnares you to the past, missing what you once had. The other keeps you daydreaming, forgetting that life is happening right now. Dwelling on the past and daydreaming of the future can trap you in what could have been and what might be.

Allow me to propose three questions to evaluate your seasons.

What do you like most about your current season of life?

What in this current season do you not want to carry into the next?

What have you learned in this season that you would have liked to have known sooner?

For everything, there is a season. By God’s grace and help, navigating the seasons past, future and present can aid you living well.

Robert Hurtgen is a husband, father, minister and writer. Read more of him at robhurtgen.wordpress.com.