God will carry you through the seasons

(Previously posted Oct. 2022)

Do you believe God gives you seasons? Do you believe that life, just like the weather, is full of seasons, and nothing stays the same for long? 

Just as you get used to one season, a new one waits around the corner.

Don't even think about getting comfortable. 

But... God.  

You can trust God to let Him carry you through the seasons and the storms of life.

How do I know this? We're currently in a storm.

The last quarter of the year my family and I went through a season of grief.  Our dad moved out of his house and into a home, then he was hospitalized due to pneumonia and died shortly after. 

A season of mourning turned to joy, when at his memorial we were able to reconnect with his family which consisted of several cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews we hadn't seen in years. My sister and brother and I reconnected. The three of us celebrated a successful memorial and were ready to move on. 

We were certain we would finally find rest for our bodies and our minds.

That wasn't the case.  

Thursday our brother died. 

He was only 42. We don't know exactly what happened, just that it might have been a heart issue; he was found unresponsive on the ground. 

He leaves behind 4 children: Ages 22, 12,10, and 2.

A fiance. 

A future. 

Friday our family got together and held each other, sobbed in each other's arms, looked at old photos and reminisced.

One week later, a few of us met at the funeral home to pick up my brother's ashes. We wanted to be there to support our niece, my brother's oldest child. 

The family wanted to band together as a whole, more than ever. We needed each other. 

You will never be the same 

A week or so after my father passed, I received a social media comment: You'll never be the same. This will change you forever.

I guess death (and grief) are a part of life that will change you forever, and hopefully for the better. 

Losing a parent--especially to an illness-- it seems like you have longer to accept this reality and gradually adjust. When they do pass on, it's still hard and you still must grieve but you have had time to prepare.

On the other hand, once I got over the shock of losing my brother, it feels like I lost a limb. I'm missing an arm or a leg! A chunk of my heart, for sure. A kidney. A lung! I've lost a sibling. 

Yes, I'm functioning. But I am an amputee with a phantom limb. Because when I think for one minute this is all one terrible nightmare, I know this is not real. He is a phone call, a voice mail, a text message away. But he's not. I've never had to remind myself so often of reality.  It's never been so hard to accept that he is gone. 

So... I am sad and depressed and sometimes irritable. Ah, grief. 

Death (and grief) are a part of life that will change you... forever. And, hopefully for the better.

How to prepare for grief

In Good Grief: A Companion for Every Loss, author Granger E. Westberg says when we go through any significant experience, we come out as different people. Depending on how we respond, we are either stronger people than before or weaker, either healthier in spirit or sicker. And, if we strengthen our faith before the storm hits, we are the boarded-up house with tape on its windows that won't shatter on impact.

As a pastor, Granger says he has "watched hundreds of people go through earth-shattering experiences of grief...those whose faith is more mature and healthier come through the experience in a way that makes them better to able to help others who face similar tragedies." 

He has seen people develop deeper faith in God as a result of their grief experiences. 

On the flipside, he said "those who have an immature or childish faith tend to face loss in unhealthy ways, and I don't need to tell you what those are. Some never work through their grief, perhaps they get stuck at one of the many stages of grief, it's not for me to tell. 

I don't know where I'd be today if I had to endure these losses without the firm foundation of Jesus. 

And I can only pray that God allows all this paint o be used for His good purposes, and if that involves leaving the kiddy pool to let God take me into the deep end of the ocean, so be it.

If our faith is strong at its foundation, we'll bend and sway and feel uncomfortable, but we won't break.  

My mother will never be the same since she lost her middle son. 

Our pastor preached on getting out of your comfort zone. 

I heard another pastor recently share his testimony and warned us not to ever get too comfortable. His testimony was about God testing the man's faith through losing everything; his job, his wife, his home and eventually gaining it all back, and then some. 

So, is this how our God works? 

We suffer, he tests our faith, we keep the faith and flourish. Or not keep the faith and lose everything? 

Is that the simple formula of how a loving, powerful, almighty, feared and revered God works?

Worship through it 

Our pastor's wife was the first person to give me this advice, and it's great.

Yet challenging.

How much easier is it to sing and praise when we are joyous, happy, excited, full of gratitude? 

How much harder is it to praise our Lord when we are facing trials? 

We are to worship through our struggles. 

years ago,I wrote a song called "The Only Way Out is Through." And that is just it. 

We worship through the pain, through the loss, and through the stages of grief, through all the emotions. Feel all the feelings.

We love a God who first loved us when He sent His son to die for us on the cross, and before he died, he suffered greatly before that, when he was beaten and tortured. Before that, He wept bitterly at the loss of his friends, he was betrayed by someone in His close circle, and He was hated for who He is. He not only is the God of knowing He is the God of experience. As a human, He experienced all these same emotions and pain, which means we serve a God also of empathy. 

Pain makes us long for peace.

1 Pet.5:7 says Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

It comforts me to know that I serve and love a God who has been through more suffering than I can bear 

John 14:27 and John 16:33 have been my go-to verses in this season. 

John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved" told us that He is 

Sometimes we can only receive the peace that Jesus offers by giving all of our cares over to the Lord. 

And,we don't have to politely hand them over, nope--he tells us to cast them--that means to fling them over 

A deeper faith, or a renewed faith, OR a NEW faith--that can result from deep grief. 

it began with uncertainty, as we weren't sure when, but we did think that our dad would get better. I was preparing myself to drive to New York a few times a week to visit. 

There are no coincidences with God and he knows all of our seasons; he is as much a meteorologist as a scientist, and the One who makes the weather. He's the One who calms the waves AND calms the storm. Sometimes He creates the storm.

Our pastor shared a quote from Warrren Wiersbe: 

A faith that can't be tested is a faith that can't be trusted. 

God will strengthen your faith through the trials and tribulations He brings you through. 

 Isaiah 40:8 says, ‘The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.”

Links: 

ALSO Read: What Does it Mean to 'Cast All Your Cares' in 1 Peter 5:7? (crosswalk.com)

Book I mentioned Good Grief: A Companion for Every Loss: Westberg, Granger E.: 9781506454474: Amazon.com: Books

Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash