Fresh Start. New Season.

Hidden behind the face of this blog are posts fully and partially written from years and seasons long forgotten.  I quickly browsed the titles and laughed at the rawness of the seasons in which they were written. 

Seasons that were overcome with fear, bitterness and disillusionment. Seasons that were painful and broken.

It's funny to think of those moments and how immensely huge they were in those moments but how small they seem today. 

That's the beautiful thing about time and perspective. What was once all consuming is now just a fleeting moment that is barely remembered.

Yet, many of those seasons we travel through leave us battered and scarred. We are holding on for our dear lives and wishing, hoping, craving restoration and rest. We long to be gathered up and taken as far as possible from those seasons. 

But does that ever really happen? Is it supposed to?

I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason. We made a bad choice. We made a good choice. Someone else made a bad/good choice for us. Wrong place at the wrong time. Right place at the right time. Whatever it may be.

The seasons that we walk through are meant for our growth, just as the natural seasons are for the growth of creation. 

Here I find myself at the beginning of a new season. A stretching of my faith....that maybe I have been asking for but never thought would come. 

This morning at church our guest speaker talked briefly about stretching and expanding our faith. He shared from the perspective of us talking out-loud at a thing to build our faith. But I would like to submit that while we can build up and expand our faith ourselves, sometimes it is God who does the expanding...even if we don't think it is possible. 

I feel that I am in a season where God is beginning to stretch my faith and push me just a little more than normal. He's beginning to open doors that I would have never imagined I'd get to walk through. Things that maybe I hoped would happen but would never have the courage to seek them out on my own. 

It is an exciting time and a fearfully reverent time....a realizing that I could never do these things alone and will need to fully rely on the wonderful, powerful God who calls things as though they aren't into being. 

So, here's to a fresh start....a new season.