Seasons of Life

“To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek;
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.”
—Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

As much as we may wish it weren’t so, the rules of this world mandate that we have all of the seasons of life from birth to death. Some of us live longer than we may deserve; and many go before they should.

We don’t decide when life and death occur. But what we can do is live out our lives while we are here. In order to truly live we don’t abuse ourselves with things that cause us harm; and we don’t treat other people unkindly.

When treated with prejudice and hate we can learn to forgive and not hate back. When we are ignored or abandoned we can reach out and love someone else who may feel distraught like us. When we need to heal we allow ourselves to do what will give us peace. We speak up when we need to and keep silent when that is best.

There are many choices we make every day that affect our lives in the moment and for the future. They seem small and insignificant at the time, but may have far reaching and long-lasting outcomes. When we handle the small stuff we keep it manageable. When things get too big and out of control for us, we ask for help.

Living life in a healthy way demands that we pay attention. We are aware of our physical and emotional needs and we deal with them in healthy and appropriate ways. To love ourselves means that we do have to put our self first and then give to others.

Wherever we are in our lives, we can know that it’s the place we are meant to be at the time, and that if we are in pain, we will come out on the other side of that with new found wisdom and peace.

You are in the season chosen for you at this moment.

Why Ask Why

“I don’t always get to know why.”
—Judith R. Smith

Often we can get so caught up in asking why that we cannot move on. We want to know why our parents treated us the way they did; or why someone stopped dating us; why our spouse had an affair; why we didn’t get the job; why we got sick; or any number of why’s.

The problem with why is that most of the time whatever happened was out of our control. We may blame ourselves and say we’ll do it different next time, when we don’t even know what to change because we don’t know the answer to why.

It’s difficult. Many of us are way more comfortable with the known than the unknown. Even if we don’t like the reason we can attempt to manipulate our thinking to remove the blame if we know that we are at fault. We can use denial, blame someone else, or anything that makes us feel better instead of owning our issues. But when we don’t know why we are left to our own vivid imaginations and that can be a troubling place to be.

Sometimes things just happen and the why doesn’t even make sense. Our parents may have treated us differently than we would have liked, but even if we knew why it would not change the fact that it happened. It might help us forgive them more, but if the reason wasn’t a good one in our opinion, then it could make things more difficult to forgive.

It’s not a bad thing in situations to know why if that information is available, we just want to avoid getting stuck in a place where we need to know why when we probably will never know, or getting to the bottom of it would just cause more strife.

All we can do when reasons are unknown is go on what we do know. If we are aware of behaviors that we are not happy with in ourselves, then we work on growth and avoid that behavior in the future. What we don’t want to do is change who we are in order to get an outcome we want, especially if that is based upon a particular loss that we are having difficulty getting over. If we are not true to our self no matter what we do we will end up unhappy.

We don’t always have to know why.

Knowledge of God’s Will

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him; praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
—Step Eleven of Twelve Step programs

When we pray for the knowledge of God’s will for us, and the power to carry that out, we ought not to then question why certain things do not happen the way we want. We can’t have it both ways. We cannot have our will be done and God’s will be done unless they are in line with one another.

Sometimes even when we think that we are in the midst of something that feels so much like it is an answer to prayer, we find that it wasn’t the particular answer we were seeking. Perhaps it is a lesson to be learned that we aren’t even sure what issue it involves. Maybe it leads to the answer we are seeking, but we just don’t see the big picture — yet.

We just have to keep seeking conscious contact and praying for knowledge of His will and the ability to do it. We won’t be asked to do anything without also being blessed with the gifts and ability to do that. And if we rely only on our will, we will continue to struggle like a fish out of water.

It’s not an easy task to follow God’s will, especially if we don’t know what that is. But if we pray for knowledge of it we will be more aware. There are times that we may not know what the next right thing is, or why something happened, but we can see what isn’t right, and just maybe see that we were very blessed that things did not go the way we wanted.

God does know best and He will not lead us into wrong things. We go there ourselves. He will use experiences to teach us, to help us grow closer to Him, and for us to gain wisdom. If something feels wrong, it more than likely is. God things click, they don’t cause us a whole lot of problems unless we struggle against them.

We more often than not know what’s going on with things in life, although we often act shocked and want to believe that we didn’t. Our intuition is good, most likely because God’s using that to connect with us. When we follow our intuition, when we go with our gut, we seldom are wrong. And this is not to say that we won’t have difficulties, pain, and loss, it just means that we are being led if we would just use the tools we were given to follow that lead.

When we are in God’s will we will know it and feel peace.

Foxhole Prayers

“The trouble with our praying is we just do it as a means of last resort.”
—Will Rogers

We often find ourselves saying foxhole prayers, those that we say because there’s nothing left to do. But how much easier our lives would be if we could only remember to pray before we are at a place where we have become desperate.

If we pray, then we have some belief that it’s being heard. It’s odd that we don’t remember to pray up front and instead often save it for last. We will contact our friends, sponsors, family, coworkers, therapists, or anybody who is available to ask advice or to tell about our woes — all the while neglecting to contact God for help.

God can and will still help us when we get in a mess, but we might avoid such predicaments if we would only seek guidance, strength, wisdom, and knowledge from our Higher Power up front.

Prayer can give us peace in the midst of our turmoil. Sometimes it may just be the act of stopping long enough to pray that gets us out of whatever thing we have gotten in the middle of. Certainly God can have a place in that peace, but just to think about God, that He is there with us every moment gives us a sense of peace and calms us.

Before we call on other people over a problem or a situation, we ought to seek out God’s assistance. Connect to God first and then see what happens. It’s a difficult thing to remember, but one that, if practiced, will prove to be a valuable asset for a good day. And keeping a spiritual connection will help us stay on track so we don’t have to end up in a foxhole crying out for help.

God is present always and should not be sought as a last resort.

Seeing Clearly

God let me hit bottom so I’d appreciate what He sent me.

We often wonder why our prayers seemingly go unanswered. Even while we are taught that God does answer our prayers, when we suffer, and don’t get what we ask for it appears that we are not being heard.

Sometimes we realize that even as much as we thought our prayers were not heard, that there was a reason that our prayers did not get answered the way we wanted and in the time frame that we expected. We may discover this in an instant or over time.

I went through a period of time, actually for years, asking for something that I wanted. And in a series of a few months the thing that I prayed for was presented to me and then pulled away time after time. It hurt and I blamed God, until one day I just gave up. If that’s the way it was going to be then fine, that must be the way He wanted things to go. And within a matter of hours after having let go out of frustration I was offered the thing I had been wanting.

It was, because of the timing, something that I knew was the answer I had been looking for. And had I not been in the place I was when it came to me, I most likely would have walked right past it because it did not fit the mold I had formed. I believe that because I hit bottom I was able to see this as a gift from God.

It takes what it takes to have faith. It took what it took for me to see clearly the answer when it arrived. We don’t understand when we don’t get what we want, when God has something better. And as long as we stubbornly seek what we want that doesn’t work, we will keep getting it, at least until we can’t stand the pain any longer and let God give us what we need instead.

When we hit bottom with pain it’s easier to see the answer from God.

Communication Requires Listening

“The value of persistent prayer is not that He will hear us, but that we will finally hear Him.”
—William McGill

How many times have we thrown up the same prayer and not heard an answer, yet seemingly out of the blue something we prayed for was answered? It’s most likely that the answer came when we finally listened. And sometimes the reason we finally listened was because we were at the end of our rope and let go.

Just as communication with people requires both speaking and listening, so it is with our Higher Power. We must stay open for the answer we pray for or we won’t see it when it arrives.

As the saying goes, “Be careful what you pray for … you just might get it.” It’s necessary for us to consider first what we are asking and then to be ready to receive when the answer comes. If we are praying for a situation to get better and the answer is for us to take an action that is frightening for us, we still have our answer and we must proceed.

Sometimes when God says no the yes comes immediately and at other times we may not get a yes for quite some time, if ever. But if we are going to trust God and ask Him for things, we also must trust Him enough to give us the right answer.

God is love so what He does is always in our best interest when we allow Him to run things in our lives. No matter how much we may think we want something and keeping hitting a wall, we keep praying that God’s will be done and it will. He’ll put those people in our lives who can teach us the lesson we need at the moment. And He will use us to teach others.

When you pray be certain you want what you are asking for and listen for the answer.

Finding the Answer

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
—M. Scott Peck

Experiencing life brings many challenges and often we seek answers, resolution, change, starting, ending and so forth. And many times it is difficult to find these things we seek because of our emotional involvement with them. We push too hard, get frustrated and angry, and whatever solution we seek seems to move farther from us.

Finding peace with a particular issue or even peace in our lives, may mean we have to get so upset that we finally have to throw our hands in the air and say, “I give up.” The saying, “Let Go and Let God,” has been passed around for a long time and it works.

We cannot orchestrate the universe, not even our own small world. When we think we want something so bad that we think we have to have it and it doesn’t happen, there’s usually a good reason. When we lose something that we had such as a job or a relationship, most likely its time was up and our lesson was learned from either that situation or it was time to move to the next learning opportunity.

We will all experience numerous times in our lives when we didn’t get what we wanted or lost what we had. And we many never know the reason. But we can find peace in our world by letting go and using gratitude in our lives for the things we do have.

We move into action because our situations make us uncomfortable and unhappy. Sometimes we need to be motivated to do something different. The struggle may seem endless in the moment, but when peace comes we can look back occasionally and understand why, and at other times, just be glad we found peace again.

Finding peace after a storm of life hits is worth the challenges presented to us.