The Seasons Of Life
UR daughter Lisa, her husband, Chadd, their four boys, and Maggie, their Newfoundland, have been living with us for several months.
The boys, Justin, Alex, Brady, and Dylan, are eight, five, three, and eighteen months old.
Chadd and Lisa are building a new house that will be ready in early November, and they have sold their previous home. So, their interim housing is with Nana and Papa.
Steve and I have had some years of grandparenting experience and love the total of seven little ones with whom God has blessed us.
We have watched the grandchildren grow and their parents teach and train them.
Now our experience has moved from numerous visits during the year to living together for eight of us.
We are getting an up-close and firsthand look at life with young children again.
Steve and I marvel. Our grandsons are wonderful to be around, well- behaved and loving. And they are very busy.
We become women just watching them tumble through a day Their energy seems limitless and their basic needs consume the better part of our daughter’s day.
I’d love to be more helpful to Lisa. In fact, when the first grandchild was born I imagined that I could handle as many babies as arrived, for any amount of time, no matter the number of their activities.
I even thought about getting a van so I could have all of them with me at once.
I have found this to be a fantasy. And I am shocked. I never expected to be too tired to do anything that I wanted to do. I scoffed at the idea of aging in a way that would limit my activities.
But I have found the truth of Ecclesiastes 3:1 not only to be true but to be freeing.
How wonderful of God to give us this verse and the ones that follow to free us from the guilt that seems to accom¬pany some changes in our lives.
I had a season of motherhood when I was the age of my daughters, and it was wonderful.
When I look back on those years I am amazed at my own life and how God provided all that I needed for that season.
Seasons allow us to experience God in the differing dimensions of our lives in ways that reveal his wisdom.
Because we live in a fallen world, we will age and eventually go to be with him.
That process is gradual for most of us and requires merely that we learn to live and enjoy life at a pace that matches our physical aging.
This isn’t bad news. Eternity is ahead, and God carries us all the way through on our journey there.
Father, thank you for the changing seasons of life and for your presence throughout all of our days, here and in eternity.