Chapters, Seasons and Santa Clarita

First thing that comes to your mind when you see this word:

Chapter

Okay good, hold that thought. Next word:

Season

Alright, now take those two thoughts and put them side by side. What’s the difference in the two of them? My train of thoughts in a glance resemble something like this…

Chapter

Staccato

Short

Precise

Distinct

Followed

Series

Individual

Precedes

Proceeds

Part 

Frustrating

Relieving

Lonely

Season

Flows

Ebbs

Connects

Changes

Colors

Transcends

Supercedes

Supernatural

Romantic

Hopeful

Growthful

Painful

Moving

Jordan, my lovely soul-friend, and I have been talking about seasons… It’s undeniable that our lives, like our world, moves in seasons. As I began to move nomadically on my own, I experienced anxiety I had never before felt in relocating. I found that even more than seasons, my subconscious was very aware of the chapters created in my life. No one in the childhood chapter of my New Hampshire life knows those who were influential in my adolescent years in the sleepy Midwest. Not a person in time in Joplin knows those in the traveling days of Scotland (save the Canadian hero Jon Lyon, who himself was present for a cross-country adventure). And not an American who knows me knows the dark-skinned friends from my time in El Salvador. Me, God, and my running are the only constants in my life… the only ones who continue through each chapter. My spirit is startled by how segmented my story is, it struggles in my sleep to grapple with the idea of being a person so separated by chapters, and my dreams are filled with trippy visions of all times in my life blurred in confusion; an effort to resolve the restless feeling I live with.

But the constants- me, God, and running (I say the latter in jest but in all honesty it has been a friend to my weary soul, reflecting in the physical world my longing to move… redeeming the action of running away into running to peace)- experience these seasons. Well, not God so much as an experience-er of these seasons but as the wind of change. How do I see these seasons? Each one is not like seeing fall every autumn and summer every solstice. These seasons are like experiencing spring for the first time. Can you imagine the first time seeing green buds on a bare tree or colorful stems shooting from a ground whose grass you have never before touched? Or, to feel the nakedness of winter with virgin eyes, seeing that her only decency is maintained by the layers of snow? New. Each season. And so we do not really see what season we are in until we are in it. I am in a season of restoration. I went from a season of misunderstanding, criticism, raggedness and fragility and awoke one morning to find my hands full of blessings I have never imagined coming to me. I can take no credit for something that I never foresaw let alone have ever experienced. Seasons become a continuously changing hymn that speak to the limitless creativity and provision of the I Am. He doesn’t change with each season. When I am angry, He is still peace. When I am sad, He is still joy. When I am happy, He is still holy. When I am content, He is still just. Each change of the living weather lets me see the Creator in a new way, to experience His truth in a new time.

And a prayer for the changing of seasons… May we never forget with the changing of the leaves, with the changing in the tides, with the changing of the heat, who is Life. May I dare to never rest my hand upon my chest and say “I am so glad I have made it to this season, that I have prepared for myself in my own efforts.” And if my feeble soul should reach such depths of arrogance may I be blown away by the whisper of Jehovah whose reminder is that He is the God who gives me even the breath to realize in what season I am existing, gives me the heartbeat to pass through. May I be dealt with ever so harshly if another chapter of my life ends with “He is not enough.” And may I daily fall to my knees in a greater understanding of the LOVE that is constant through each season, connecting each chapter, making my human story entwined with the living Divine.