{ Day 1- Thankful for the Seasons… In Our Life }

As Thanksgiving fast approaches, I am often thinking of all the blessings that I have been so graciously provided by the Lord. We truly have so much to be grateful for, many things which are often overlooked on a daily basis. In trying to be more grateful, I am going to dedicate 12 days to being grateful for at least one specific thing. Hopefully, by Thanksgiving I will have more gratitude in my heart and in my home.

As I was mowing the lawn yesterday, I enjoyed the instant gratification of having all the fallen lives picked up and my half green lawn beneath showing it’s happy face again. No sooner had those happy feelings appeared, than the wind started to blow and dozens more leaves came tumbling to the ground. I looked up to the high canopy of trees overhead, and wondered to myself why on earth I was even doing this. Within days or mere hours, the ground would once again be filled with leaves. It kind of irritated me, in my “want-everything-always-neat” attitude, that these falling leaves were looking rather messy in my yard, and I wondered why some things in nature were so “messy” at times. I was almost instantly reminded of how orderly nature really is. How there are seasons for everything. Everything has a time and a season, including my trees full of leaves. Nothing is forgotten. Nothing is out of place. Everything has it’s place and time to come forth and show it’s beauty and purpose.

I thought of how we too have the seasons of our life, a time and purpose for everything we do and are. Six  years ago, I was talking with a good friend about how I wished I could go to the temple more. I was beating myself up about not being there as often as some. She reminded me that I also had a husband in his medical internship working 80-100 hrs. a week, 4 young children-one being a young baby, a big calling a church,…the list went on and on. She said, “There are times and seasons in our life to do those things more. One day you will have the time to go much more often, for now, it’s okay to go when you can.”

Those words of wisdom have carried me through some very difficult times in the last few years. I have come to see that there are seasons in our life. There are times when we bloom and grow at a quick springtime pace. Times when we work hard and play hard in the summer days of our life. Times when we feel purified, whole, and at peace like the sweet white winters. And yes, times of autumn when we may feel a  little dormant, but are given the blessing of a chance to rest and renew ourselves after a long hard working summer. What a tender mercy this is to have a chance to rest and regain strength for the springtime's ahead that will give way to more needed growth and blooming in all aspects of our lives.

I now peer out my window with a new love for my yard that floweth over with a batch of newly fallen leaves. Leaves that have worked hard to shade our picnics, provided strength for the trees whose limbs my children climb upon, and leaves who now enjoy the rest as their lives change color and they too move into a new season. What beauty and joy they bring even in their time of “rest” as their vibrant colors paint the treetops.

How grateful I am for the simple reminder of the season of life I am in right now. I think instead of wanting to move ahead and work and grow in the busyness that can so easily surround me, I will enjoy a time to rest and renew. I will enjoy a time to hold my new baby while he is in this short season of his life. I will not worry about having my house perfect, only peaceful. Not being everything to everyone, just being my best to the ones that matter most. And most of all, taking the time to look back at the seasons gone by, remembering how far we’ve come, and thank those who have made it so.