Seasons

A friend and I were talking about how our marriages were different now that we had babies - not bad-different, just different. She called it a "season." I really liked that idea - its much better than "this-thing-we're-going-through-right-now," which is how I usually thought of it.

This got me thinking about my life and my marriage in terms of seasons and it has given me some perspective.

Ben and I definitely started out with a long, lovely summer, living in a beautiful Rocky Mountain community, both of us enjoying our work, traveling internationally nearly every year, spending time with friends and family and engaging in plenty of activities that brought us joy and satisfaction.

Then came a time of change when we decided we were ready to have a baby. What should have been a peaceful autumn, quickly turned into a long winter as we dealt with infertility, a pregnancy that ended with a miscarriage, a move to a large city where we knew no one and had to work long hours at stressful - and in my case, miserable - jobs just to make ends meet, followed by more infertility.

Then we had new life in our home and I thought the long winter was finally over and spring had arrived at last. I had this beautiful baby boy, who was the realization of years of longing, and I felt that I should have been basking in the warmth and beauty of this new season, but I wasn't. It still felt like winter to me and every day was a struggle.

But I think I had forgotten what spring in the Rocky Mountains really means. Its nothing like spring in children's story books. In Montana, spring is just winter in its death throes. It is piles of old dirty snow and naked, lifeless trees. It means snow and rain and hail and sun all in the same day. There are 60 degree temperature swings within a few hours. And when you are coming out of a long winter, spring can feel like it will never end.  But then one day you wake up and the snow and the mud have been replaced by a shimmering veil of green. And you realize that all through that seemingly endless picture of desolation, beneath the snow and the decaying leaves, life was struggling and fighting its way back to the surface.

Somehow, seeing this time in my life from this perspective makes me feel better. Spring isn't always sunshine and flowers and bunnies and rainbows. Sometimes its the slow casting off of a long winter.  Layer by layer, the cold and the ugliness melt away and life and beauty patiently struggle up through the heavy burden of winter. And in the end, it is worth it. 
 
Summer is coming, I can feel it. But for now, I'm going to be present for this season of my life and take it for what it is. I will likely have more summers, autumns, and even winters, but spring may never come again. If all goes well, I will only have one more baby in my lifetime. After that all the challenging and wonderful things about spring will come to an end. And I expect I shall be a jumble of happy and sad. Which is seems appropriate. Spring is warm and cold, gentle and fierce, happy and sad.