To everything there is a season, but should we let that season define us? Are we IN a season or do we pass THROUGH a season?
This morning I was listening to a video by Lisa Bevere, author of Lioness Arising and these words she spoke jumped out at me:
“Don’t be distracted by your season. You are not your season.”
You are not your season. It reminds me of that song by India.Arie – “I am not my hair.”
I refer to seasons a lot in my writing and speaking about hospitality, but I have to admit that I needed to hear those words today.
We’re coming off a long, hot summer, but I’ve had a chill in my soul for the past nine months or so.
Tough times can make the hottest summer days seem like winter. Funny thing is, back in January, I had chosen a ‘word of the year’ for myself.
The word was flourish.
Seems like a summery kind of word, doesn’t it? All green and flowery? “Look at me, I’m blossoming; pick me, pick me!”
In his book The Me I Want to Be, author John Ortberg talks a lot about flourishing: “God made you to flourish, but flourishing never happens by looking out for number one.”
Oops.
That whole “unless a seed falls to the ground and dies” thing is a hard lesson to learn. How objective can you be when you’re the seed? It just seems so passive and you’ve probably already figured out that I’m not passive.
Ortberg goes on to say that sometimes letting go of self can feel a lot like death. “On the other side of death is freedom and no one is more free than a dead man. Jesus had a lot to say about death to self. It’s a death to a lesser self – a false self, so that a better and nobler self can come to life.”
When you flourish, you become more you; Ortberg refers to it as becoming “you-ier.”
I like that. My name is Sue and I’m becoming “Sue-ier.”
