post and photo by Diane Woodrow, Conwy Beach, July 2021.
The Godspace theme of Gearing Up For A New Season got me thinking about what that means to me.
At the moment, none of us really knows what this New Season will look like. With global warming, our seasons are all over the place. Over the last month here in North Wales, we have gone from 17C to 32C and now it is 13C. The only type of weather we haven’t had over July is snow, but we’ve had blistering heat, pouring rain, hail, funnel winds, and gentle sunshine too.
At one time when schools restarted, the pupils would have had time at the end of the last term to go check out their new classes or new schools and have met their teachers and even started making friends, and be prepared for their new season. But due to COVID, many were isolated before the end of term or discouraged to be anywhere other than in their regular classrooms.
For me personally, I can feel a new season starting. Since I published The Little Yellow Boat, I’m being called a professional writer, which has led to me being paid to become part of a long-term youth project. I am also setting aside regular times to write, both in my beautiful study or out on walks. Yesterday I went to the place in the picture and wrote.
But still, the question is – how do I prepare for this new season? How do I gear myself up for it? What will it look like? Or even, should I be planning? I write more about this in my blog post, “Intentionality Written in Pencil”, which will also appear on Godspace on August 17th.
So whereas once we would almost know what this new season would look like with COVID, with the extremes of weather, with new projects, with different working conditions, we cannot predict how things will be. Tom Sine does a good attempt to explore the themes of these changing times on his blog – NewChangemakers.
As the saying goes, “change is always with us”, but it feels like as things start to open up, even with cases of COVID continuing to increase, there is nothing solid to hang on to. I am grateful for my faith but even with that, although the Bible says the Lord is the same today, tomorrow, and yesterday, my relationship with God and how I see my faith has changed.
So what are the concrete things I can hold on to as I gear up for a new season? And what can I share with others?
For me, the big one would be that God is God and is always there no matter what goes on, no matter how much I change, no matter what goes on in the world. And that God wants the best for me and so, if we work together I can grow more flexible, more trusting in God, deeper in my beliefs of knowing God is watching my back. You know I was going to write stronger but I felt like flexible was the word. We talk a lot about growing stronger as though that is a good thing but I actually think that if I can get more and more flexible then I will be able to roll with the seasons, be blown by the winds of change but not fall. I think to be more flexible, I need to have roots that go deep and I think for me as I gear up to this new season, whatever it is going to look like, I want to send my roots deep into my Saviour, Maker of the Universe, and just trust that what will come my way, however it comes, I will remain with my Saviour.
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