Winter & Spring // The Season of my Heart

Life is full of seasons, and each aspect of your life can be different. With my business, it is Spring time. Laying the foundation and building up the structure. As a mother, I am in the Summer time, for it is the time of nurturing and protecting.

As a wife, it is harder to identify. Even after almost five years of marriage, and almost a decade together, we are still very much in a late spring and early summer. In some areas we are preparing the fields of our relationship as we encounter new trials and experiences, just as we are nurturing and watering the existing bind between us.

I am not perfect. I daily make mistakes. There are a pile of dishes in the sink and unfolded laundry to prove it. Working from home makes it ten times harder, because the expectation is that you have to get all the house work done as well as interact and care for two children, on top of trying to run two companies…. things don’t get done. And heave forbid I get sick. But I have to just breathe, and keep moving forwards.

This past Sunday, the paster at my church spoke on the seasons of life, and how everyone wants to be in the ‘harvest’ or time of plentiful rewards — yet there are three other seasons that pave the way for it. It is a false truth that you must always be harvesting, or have a positive reward being recieved; it is false because it means you are neglecting the other tasks needed to be done in the other seasons of your life and with your spiritual walk. There is a time for every season – each having their own purpose.

Spring is a time for preparing and building up. You can’t get things done later or won’t have a healthy start, unless you are getting down to the dirt and having it ready for the seeds of God’s will to grow and be nurtured.

Summer is a time for tending and applying of the means to keep the fields safe and growing. To prevent the enemy from stealing and ruining the seeds and produce, weeding and keeping out pests. Weeds will set back the growth – and they are both tall and seen yet also hidden under the surface.

The heat will get to you. The sun with try to wither your plants and dry out the fertilized soil.

It is all work to get to the harvest. Grueling work. So you have to work a little harder to maintain in the things God has been growing.

Autumn is a time for harvest – the hardest season. You can’t bypass the natural process of God to receive something you don’t deserve. You only receive if you are praying and serving and actively seeking a return. You can’t buy a harvest you haven’t planted. And if you do, you will treat it horribly.

It is exhausting in the harvest season, you have to actively bring in the crop. There is a small timeframe before it rots. You have to properly store it so that is doesn’t turn to rot or will be eaten.

If you don’t plant it, and value the effort going into making it to the harvest – then you won value the end product. Trust God in all the season! Trust him in all the times, and have the wisdom to know when to plant, or how to cultivate and how to save the harvest for the winter season.

Winter is a time for using the harvest. The season you have prepared for, where you have to rest, and have to have faith for the coming Spring season. A time of recharging and rejuvenation – a cycle of sufficiency.

Sometimes waiting is just waiting. That can be so hard to be still and wait. Winter seasons are not all the same. Sometimes it will be heavy and long, yet other times it is short and mild. A time of maintaining the supplies and regrouping for the next planting season.

Miracles will never fall out of the air without work. Things will never be perfect, in any season. You always have to be vigilant and work through all the little bumps in the road

The problem in the kingdom, we have the wrong behavior in the right season. If in the harvest season and you are rest, you will waste your crops and your efforts. Right behavior for the right season. In the resting season, you are planting, you will have a wasted crop. If in the planting season you are fertilizing, you will have the wrong crop. If in the fertilizing season, you harvest, you will have a weak crop that will not be fulfilling.

Focus on the right behavior in the right time. God has a plan and a time for all things, and He has given you a road map, you just have to have patience and faith and strong perseverance.

No season is a bad season – winter is crucial to life even if nothing appears to be growing or being done. Just as night has it purpose, so does the winter. You can’t rebuke the cold or the heat, these are constants and you have to be prepared for it and know what is the best use of your time and talents in that season. Don’t lose faith because your winter is long or your harvest time is short. Be diligent with what God gives you, for it is not the size of the return, but the labor and spirit of a person that will be rewarded.

Life is exhausting. It was never meant to be easy and work-free. You will reap a reward if you didn’t lose heart. Keep a positive attitude and find the joy in everyday tasks. Just because someone else is having a huge and bountiful harvest, you didn’t see them in the winter and spring season. Don’t ever compare because you could be living in two different stated of faith and spirituality.

God’s plan is unique and different to each person. But He is there in all of it. Have faith and perseverance.