STXWM Blog

Do you ever feel like you are trapped in a cycle of difficult seasons? Like just as one comes close to an end, something else starts falling apart? Winter after winter with no relief? I certainly have. There are a myriad of emotions involved in difficult times but I think the one that is the greatest hurdle for me is fatigue. When you’ve cried so much that it seems to no longer relieve the tension inside and you’ve prayed until you’ve run out of words and yet, nothing seems to change. All that is left is an overwhelming fatigue that sleep cannot dispel. It’s a fatigue that is not rooted in the absence of rest but rather the absence of peace.  

I love the book of Psalms. If there is one thing that the psalmists understood and never failed to communicate, it is raw emotion: fear, victory, grief, joy, pain, relief and anguish.  In my humble opinion, Psalms is the most accurate description in the Bible (maybe in the world) of the human experience up close. In its pages you get to ride the roller coaster of emotion, all the while experiencing it through the lens of those holding tightly to the hand of God. I can hear the cry of my own heart as the psalmists call out to God for healing, protection and connection. I can hear it especially when the writers dare to cry out in anger, fear, pain and waiting. I am so thankful that God included the Psalms in His words to us.  

I find that in the past several years, I’ve spent more and more time in the Psalms and in the story of King David. I won’t (or can’t) share a lot of details about my personal seasons in recent history, but if you have been where I am (or are here now) you don’t need me to–you have your own seasons to reference. I have linked a song below that I have listened to on repeat recently. It’s not a new one and I liked it back when I first heard it 20 years ago, but now it means so much more. It’s all about seasons and how God uses them. It’s a huge relief to believe that God is using this time for a purpose and that all the pain and waiting will not be wasted.

Natural seasons have a job to do. The path that God laid out for the earth to travel from summer, to autumn, to winter, to spring, and around again and again is the path that births and supports life on this planet and allows us to grow and harvest food. Just like the natural world, God has set us all on a path that carries us through seasons intended to create and nurture new life in our hearts and relationships. One line in the song describes winter by saying “even now in death, You open doors for new life to enter.”

In Psalm 126 the psalmist describes the pain of the people of Israel, having been in captivity in Babylon for 70 years before God delivered them. (Talk about a long season of waiting.) Just as they are finally able to come home, they return to cities and lands that had fallen into disrepair, and in some cases deliberate destruction in their absence.  Their hearts rejoiced to be free, only to break again at the sight of what had become of their home. At this moment the psalmist offers thanks for their freedom, and they get to work reclaiming Jerusalem. He writes “those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest.” (vs. 5-6)

As women, mothers, wives and breadwinners, it is often not an option for us to just sit down and quit when it gets hard. We work, take care of our families, go to jobs, and never stop, all while our hearts might be breaking. We might be holding our breath and enduring pain waiting on God to bring us out of our current season. Sometimes seasons stretch for so long that we even stop asking God to deliver us and start asking God to just help us to survive it.  

Can I encourage you today? I cannot end this season for you, and I am here with you. If I could stop yours and you could stop my pain, I know that as sisters we would do that for each other in a heartbeat. Psalm 30:5 says that “weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.” This season will end. The morning will come. And in the interim, God is working. New life and fresh revival is being cultivated under the soil of this frozen ground watered by your tears. I have been in a dark night of the soul before, and I can honestly say that the woman that walked into that season is not the same one that walked out. Growth and healing happened in that season.

Growth and healing are words that we often associate with good things in our minds, and that is true, but what we are usually thinking of is the time after the growth and healing is complete. The actual work of healing and growth is messy and painful while it’s happening.  Childbirth, for example, is messy, vulnerable and touted as the most intense pain a woman can endure, and yet we keep signing up to have more babies because the joy that follows is so worth it.

I do not at all want this to sound dismissive of the difficult time you might be walking through now but I want to encourage you that no matter how long your winter, no matter how long the night, the seasons are still progressing and God is still working. This season will not last forever and there will be joy in the harvest.

“So it is with You and how You make me new with every season’s change, and so it will be as You are recreating me.  Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring….”  Every Season by Nicole Nordeman

by Stephanie Sharp