Seasons

Sitting here in my worn but comfortable computer chair with the fall sun shining in on my shoulders.  Such a warm, comforting feeling it is this time of the year.  Fall is my favorite season.  I love the changing of the leaves from green to bright oranges, reds, and yellows.  The cooler temperatures always make me feel renewed and vivacious.  And, since my birthday is in October, I am sure that fact alone helps to make fall my favorite of the four seasons we experience in East Tennessee.

Throughout my life, each season seems to have brought good memories with which I associate them with.  For example, I had my first real date in the fall.  I remember the crispness of the air, how I could see his breath when he breathed, and how sitting beside him really warmed me up!!!  I also remember a specific song, "Dance With Me", was popular the first fall that I started my professional career.  Every time I hear it now I get a certain feeling of fall regardless the time of the year.

Winter, of course, comes with memories of snows, Christmas (past and recent), basketball games, etc.  I love the closeness of family and friends during the winter months and have such good memories of those get togethers.  I even like the shortness of the winter days.  It just seems to make home so, well...homey.

Spring, is is second favorite season.  I love the rebirth of the East Tennessee foliage and the warm, mild temperatures.  Each year at spring time I remember and once again experience the freedom of coming out of heavy winter clothes and into light weight summer garb.  All life seems to be renewed in the spring with the promise of God's everlasting love.

Now, summer is my least favorite season.  I just do not like three digit temperatures, or even the 90's.  I do have so many special memories of the beach while on vacation, some with my parents, many with my husband, and now the ones I take with my friends.  Of course, I did get married in the summer, July 30, 1983, to be exact.  So that period of time and day holds very special memories for me.  Yep, the seasons of our climate hold great memories and reasons for loving, or at least liking, all of them.

However, as the sun continues to stream lightly on my shoulder this morning, I am reminded that there are seasons of life that we all experience, regardless of where we live.  We are all conceived, born, live, and then we die.  It is a simple as that while being so much more complicated.

It would seem I have had several lives built into one.  I grew up and went to school, began and continued in my career, got married, got divorced, retired, and now I am just cruising and enjoy the final "sub-season" of my life, until  the inevitable happens and I die.  But, who knows, there may be another "sub-season" of my life before I kick the bucket.  Only time will tell, I guess.

There is one grand truth about the seasons of life, or the cycle of life if you will.  That one tell tale truth is the fact that the majority of us go completely through it within a period of a hundred years.  After a hundred years, unless we have been famous, we are pretty much forgotten.  That fact alone bothers me to some extent.  I find it difficult to phantom that I will not be.  Life on earth will go on without me and I simply will not be a part of it.  My seasons of life will have cycled through and my body will go back to dust with the rest of the earth.  But, alas, I have the promise of an eternal life once I cycle through here.  That's what makes my non-existence on earth so sweet and something that I look forward to.  No, I don't necessarily want to die, but when I do I know my eternal life will follow!  How precious is that truth?

So, let's celebrate the changing of the seasons, both climate and life seasons.  Let's enjoy what they bring, even the challenges we must confront.  Life is good!  No, actually, life is great!!!!
  

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