A New Season

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

     Seasons come and go in our lives. Things change, our environment changes, the people we spend our time with changes, and our habits and interests change. We might have a season full of relaxation and tranquility and we might have a season filled with pressures that we may think are too much to handle.  We have seasons of doubt and worry and we have seasons of confidence and trust. In all of this change throughout the seasons in our lives we have one thing that is constant. God is our constant throughout all of our seasons in life.

     The New Year brought on a new season in my life. I ended December of last year finished with my senior year of high school. Starting a new year without school was a blessing but it also brought on a struggle that I was not aware of until recently. Without the responsibility of school to take up the majority of the day I looked for other ways to fill my schedule when I wasn’t working. Short of realizing it at the time, I was saying yes to too many things. I took on too many projects and agreed to hang out with friends too often which left me exhausted and yearning for relaxation. I was trying to balance too many things on my plate. In an effort to try and decrease the load, I tried to set unhealthy and unrealistic deadlines for my projects and goals. Creating these deadlines set me up for failure as I was greeted with weariness and disappointment when the deadlines would come and go without my projects being completed. I slowly came to realize how unhealthy this was for me and I started to push back my deadlines or not set them at all. I still was having a bigger issue that I was neglecting to address. I was slowly decreasing what was already on my plate but I was not paying attention to what I was putting on it. I was still saying yes and agreeing to things, adding them to my plate quicker than I was taking other things off. I was stuck in a perpetual state of doing too much without the time to do everything I needed to do. I eventually came to the realization that I needed to start saying no to things but that was not as easy as it sounded.

     When you get an idea in your head that excites you, I mean really excites you it is hard not to obsess over it. You start thinking of all of the ways you can make this idea into a reality. The very last thing that comes into my head is the thought of, “maybe I should say no to this idea because I have too much going on right now.” I get ideas like this all the time. For me it can be as simple as getting a meal with friends or as big as creating the biggest string art I’ve ever made. Once I get something in my head that excites me, it is very hard for me to focus on anything else until it is carried out. It used to be almost impossible for me to even entertain the idea of saying no to something that I was excited about. As I was working on lightening my load I realized that saying no was something I would have to start doing. I decided that I was going to start saying no to anything and everything extra that was outside of my regular schedule so that I could clear off my plate but it was very difficult for me. Saying yes is an automatic response for me. I say yes before I take the time to think it over. A few times without thinking, I would automatically say yes to something and then remember later that I should’ve said no to it. I slowly began to have less and less on my plate but there was one thing that was still eating up too much of my time. Although I was doing fewer projects I found myself spending more time mindlessly browsing social media so I decided I needed to stop.

     At the end of January, I decided to say no to the majority of my personal social media for good. I deleted all of my accounts except for Facebook. This started as a thirty day challenge in the beginning of January but after those thirty days were up I didn’t find myself having a desire to reinstall or create new accounts for my previously deleted social media. I found myself spending significantly less time on my phone which allowed me to focus on other more important things during the day. Although social media can be good, for me personally, I found that I was experiencing more downsides than upsides to having multiple accounts over an array of social media apps and deleting them was actually far easier than I thought it was going to be. I have really enjoyed not having those accounts anymore and as of now I’m not planning on getting them back.

     The end of March has brought on the end of a season in my life, a season of significant mental and spiritual growth that forced me to rely on God in my weariness and stress. It can be easy to say, “Once I’m through this month or season of my life things will be easier or I’ll be less busy.” I find myself thinking too much about the future when I am in a season of stress and growth. It can be hard to focus on the present season when I am weary and longing for a change. It can also be very easy to focus on the negative things that happened throughout a season in our lives. Although the Lord has blessed me in many ways, I haven’t really mentioned anything that went well or that I accomplished besides some habit changes until now. In March I finished the largest string art that I have ever created and relaunched my string art business. Although I said no to taking new orders until the first of May I received amazing feedback from people and potential customers during the relaunch. I have continued to enjoy my job at Target and was cross trained to electronics this year giving me more knowledge of the store which has added a fun, new challenge at work. I also spent time during this season photographing some portraits of my friends and taking my first real product photos of the Starbucks string art that we hung in our store. I’ve enjoyed slowly increasing my photography knowledge and experience during this past season. Overall, this past season of my life was a pretty jam-packed three months filled with lots of challenges as well as lots of rewards.

     Last week marked the start of a new season for me. A new hobby came with this new season. This new hobby is disc golf. Disc golf means more to me than throwing a few frisbees around with friends. For me, disc golf sparks competitiveness. It sparks joy as the disc leaves your fingertips and you watch it soar toward the basket. It sparks laughter from your friends when your release that disc and it soars into the river to sink to the bottom and be possibly lost forever. Disc golf sparks good conversation and fellowship with old friends and new ones that you pick up along the way. Disc golf sparks great opportunities for photography. Disc golf is a way to get outside and enjoy God’s beautiful creation and then also to question why He decided to plant a tree right in the path of your flying disc. Simply put, disc golf to me, is not just golf with frisbees; it is a new season in my life.

I don’t know what my future holds but I do know who holds my future.

~Tim Tebow