Last week I wrote about a gray season that hit a crescendo last week, which had really been lingering for about a month. As I was talking with Aycia, she mentioned that I had seemed more distracted than normal for about a month. During that month I felt like my head was in a fog, like I was living on Dagobah without a way to make it out of the swamp.
While I don’t feel like I’ve fully extricated myself from the mire, my head is beginning to clear. I feel some more focus coming back into my life. I’m realizing all of the things that fell to the wayside and what I need to do to pick up the pieces.
Some of those pieces include discerning what God taught me in the midst of that season.
We’re all going to experience gray seasons at some point in our lives. Very often they’ll sneak up on us and we’ll feel lost for weeks or months at a time. Eventually, though, the gray will give way to clarity and we’ll see how best to move forward. We can’t fully move forward, though, unless we learn and grow from our gray seasons.
God doesn’t just bring tragedy and hardships into our lives to mess with us. James reminds us that God has a purpose for the gray seasons in our lives.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Our gray seasons should push us towards maturity. They can only do that, though, if we’re willing to take the time to think through and process them.
For me that meant sitting down and talking with Alycia.
For the most part I process things internally and come to some resolution within my own head. Knowing what I had been going through, though, Alycia pushed me to talk with her and do some processing out loud. Through that conversation I was able to express what I had been thinking and feeling. That expression allowed me to better identify what God had shown me and how he had used this gray season to push me towards maturity.
I’m grateful that Alycia helped me get to that place. We all need some way to get to that place.
God is going to bring gray seasons into our lives but he always has a reason for it. We need to trust in that truth and discern how God is shaping us within the midst of that season. By persevering and searching for how God is working in our lives, we’ll gain a greater level of maturity and become more the people God intended us to be.
How do you best discern what God is trying to teach you?
“By persevering and searching for how God is working in our lives, we’ll gain a greater level of maturity and become more the people God intended us to be.”
Thanks Scott. I needed to hear that and be reminded of that today.
I have often felt I am wiser after going through depression. Perhaps I even am wiser.
Difficult seasons do offer a different perspective that can help us grow.