On seasons and my job today.

As overused as the word "season" is, I can't think of a better one to use in this context.

I think I go through seasons where one central lesson is forefront over all others. Like all worthwhile lessons, after each one's respective season it never disappears. But I think once it has penetrated deep enough to not be carried away by the latest wind, then that is the time when a new season comes and a new lesson accompanies it.

Ask me several years ago what the lesson was, and I would have told you it was love. I started really understanding that God loved me when I was 17. Evidence and reminders of that love started popping up everywhere. The books I happened to read talked about it, the songs I listened to, the people I heard speak, the lives I watched being lived around me. It was profound.

Then came the season of new life and identity. Everything around me was confirming to me that my life was new and different because I was in Christ and that everything that I am is defined by Jesus. It wrecked me. Then made me stronger.

After that was the season of grace and the inundation characteristic of previous seasons once again filled this one.

What I'm detecting right now is that I'm in a season of "you don't have any control over your life." That's the lesson I'm learning.

As always, it's very timely. I think I need this lesson at this precise moment, because I want to have control over my life. I graduated from college. Naturally, I want to go out and take on the world, decide what I want to do and do it. Especially since I did the whole college thing never understanding why I was there, and feeling that if I was truly doing what I wanted to, I probably wouldn't be there. But part of me wanted to be there (a small part) and I felt like I was supposed to be there more than anything, so a college student I was. Longing for the day when I could finish and move on with my life. Do something I really wanted to do for a change. And whatever it took to get there, I would make it happen.

Me. I'll do it.

But I told God a long time ago that my life was for him. I realized a long time ago that it would be better that way, because I really can't do much of anything on my own anyway. And if Jesus really loves me and the rest of the crazy world, then pursuing that love is what I wanted my life to be about more than anything else. So I said that I would let go of control.

These past few months have been testing the sincerity of that commitment.

On top of everything else that's been happening, my mom is now in severe pain and can't use her left arm. She's left-handed which makes it even more devastating.

So despite what I think I may want to do today, or tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, I chiefly want to love my family and support them. My attitude, how I treat people, those are really the only things I can control. Therefore today (and the next day and consecutive days after) I am a caretaker/7th grade teacher/surrogate mom/chauffeur/dish washer/laundry woman/cook who probably won't find time to take a shower. (Which I suppose is okay for a dirty hippie.)