Lissen: evidence that healing is taking place in your life is when you can see old messages from past loves and birthday cards written from former friends and smile. Genuinely smile at those words and remember those times and receive those words for what they were then even though the relationship ended or the friendship came to a close.

So much about life is seasonal. Why would our human connections be exempt from seasons too?

As a gardener, I experience the power of seasons in tangible ways because of what I plant, cultivate, and harvest. Some things grow year-round and continue growing. I have a rosemary Hercules bush that started out as a baby plant more than three years ago. It continues to GROW, year-round, pushing past all the elements of the seasons central Florida throws its way…hot, arm-pits-of-Hades summers and some unexpected, frost touching cold winters. It goes with these seasons and it keeps GROWING. It anchors its roots in deep and it lives and thrives in season with me.

Other plants grow for three to four months, bear their fruit and produce (or not cause plants be finicky sometimes too if they don’t have what they need even though you try to support them) and then they give up the ghost and that season is over. My watermelons and tomatoes be like this sometimes.

Seasonal. When it’s good, it’s so good. And when the season is up, it’s done.
It took me a while before I understood in my later 30s the cycles of seasons and what they actually are when it comes to people. Some are destined to journey with me through decades because God designed our journeys this way.

And some will only intersect with me for a season. That season could be three years or it could be three months. Even if I wanted them to be with me longer. I was given…a season. And then…change opened a new door. Hmmm, well now. Perspective is everything.

And…letting go of someone, be it a relationship romantically or a friendship that has run it’s course, sometimes means going forward so you can become who you need to be. Seasons show me this.