A time for everything...

Yesterday, our preacher, Carl, said "it is now wedding season"...I have never thought about there being an actual season for weddings, but it did get me thinking about the seasons of life. I think about Ecclesiastes...there is a time for everything.  Most people have heard the passage that is so popular...a time to be born and a time to die...but verse 11 is what I love! 

"He has made everything beautiful in its time...no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end"  

There are times in my life when looking around nothing looked beautiful...single mom, living at home, a job that would never allow that to change, feeling like there was never going to be a time when things were good or that I would be good enough.  Then there were times when things were looking up...Cal was doing well in school, he was healthy!! but I was still a single mom and so in all seasons there was a sadness, a burden that I was not fully providing for my son.  There are those that will say (and have told me to my face) that I made a horrible decision to be a single parent.  I suppose that is their opinion and they are allowed to have it, but I know the only thing more damaging to my son than me being single, was not being single.  The day I got engaged, my sweet 9 year old came in my room and said "I've been waiting for a dad for 9 years and now I'm going to have one."  That was a beautiful and heart breaking moment and I cannot, even today, fathom what God has done in our lives from that cold November day in 2003 when my little boy began waiting for a dad to the cold February day in 2013 when he felt like the wait was over.  God has provided for us, guided us, protected us, hidden us in Him and worked out a beautiful plan for our lives that we cannot fathom.  He makes all things beautiful and even on those lonely, lost days HE was working in our lives and unfolding a new season.  Winter comes before Spring and we are sitting in those amazing days that are neither fully Winter nor fully Spring...and I am so grateful!



Ecclesiastes 3
There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

⁹ What do workers gain from their toil? ¹⁰ I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. ¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet^[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. ¹² I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. ¹³ That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. ¹⁴ I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.