Week 6: There is a Season

 

{ Sunset Beach, North Shore, Oahu }

I am 43 years old. I sit here writing my heart out, and in the background I can hear my children playing and laughing. The summer sun is setting outside my screen door and I voices waft up from the downstairs pool into my art studio. This summer is a working summer for me. With my husband home from teaching high school English to take care of the kiddos, he has given me his blessing to work, and I am left free most days to write, and create and become. It is a gift beyond words, this gift of time, for it is also the gift that says each day and each hour, “I believe in you and your art. I see how hard you work all year to juggle your work in between the housework and the kids and now it’s my turn.”

In some ways I feel that I am past my prime, that I am too old to still be trying to “get there” and feeling that I’ve wasted so much time trying to figure out my life. In other ways, I still feel very much like a kid. These parts of me feel resilient, strong and even audacious with big dreams and growing unabashed confidence that God’s purposes for me will come to fruition. The hard part, I find, is learning to be content and even joyful, fully trusting God, even if my big dreams don’t ever blossom. In the meanwhile I am learning about the trust thing, day by day.

Ecclesiasties 3 states:

¹ There's an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:

 ^2-8 A right time for birth and another for death,
   A right time to plant and another to reap,
   A right time to kill and another to heal,
   A right time to destroy and another to construct,
   A right time to cry and another to laugh,
   A right time to lament and another to cheer,
   A right time to make love and another to abstain,
   A right time to embrace and another to part,
   A right time to search and another to count your losses,
   A right time to hold on and another to let go,
   A right time to rip out and another to mend,
   A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
   A right time to love and another to hate,
   A right time to wage war and another to make peace.

 ~ Ecclesiasties 3:1-8, The Message

Over the years I have seen seasons of plenty and seasons of want. There was a decade when I laid down all artistic endeavors altogether and simply went to work everyday and lived a “normal” life, devoid of all art related pursuits…I can’t even recall how I survived or what brought me joy during that 10 year span. There were lessons learned, and re-learned and re-learned again, and then a slow and often painful journey back to myself. Through it all I continue to realize that our lives and our souls are a complex weave of lightness and darkness, chaos and peace, fearful striving and peaceful trusting and everything in between. There is messiness in living as in birthing a life, but the thing is, there is the living of all of it—and it’s the living of it all that matters. The seasons of life come and go and with them, there is an ebb and flow to all of life.

“Dear Lord, today I thought of the words of Vincent van Gogh: “It is true there is an ebb and flow, but the sea remains the sea.” You are the sea. Although I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same. Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life; by your love I am sustained; and to your love I am always called back. There are days of sadness and days of joy; there are feelings of guilt and feelings of gratitude; there are moments of failure and moments of success; but all of them are embraced by your unwavering love.

My only real temptation is to doubt in your love, to think of myself as beyond the reach of your love, to remove myself from the healing radiance of your love. To do these things is to move into the darkness of despair.

O Lord, sea of love and goodness, let me not fear too much the storms and winds of my daily life, and let me know that there is ebb and flow but that the sea remains the sea. Amen.” ~Henri Nouwen, (1932-1996), a Dutch Catholic Priest who authored 40 books on the spiritual life.

{ One of the flower pots I threw on the wheel at the University of Hawaii Leisure Center :: 2002 }

May your journey ahead be full of blessings and wonder and may you always feel the support and love of the kindred spirits you have met along the way.

Up for discussion: This week, take some time to reflect on how far you’ve come in the last 6 weeks on our journey together. What things are you aware of now that you weren’t when we began? Are there truths that you were afraid to admit to yourself at the start that you can now claim more boldy for yourself, and if so, what are those truths? Has any part of your soul or your life transformed? If so, what’s undergone transformation and to what extent? What are you choosing as an act of your own free will, to leave behind as you journey onward? A year from now, what is the one thing you think you’ll still remember from our time together?