I think Mother Nature missed the memo. You know, the one about it being spring and all. Nothing like capping off spring break with a winter storm, huh? From what I could tell from the weather map on Friday night, our area would be flirting with blizzard conditions, and by 1 p.m. Saturday, I could see why. The shot above shows what it looked like from our yard a little over an hour after the first flakes started falling.
Just think of the poor little perennials and flowering pears and redbuds. Goodness, what a shock to their delicate systems. I can almost hear their objections. “What in the world is going on? This is the wrong season for snow! Sure, we’re used to running the risk of low overnight temps, but this is ridiculous!”
Nature does have a way of surprising us, doesn’t it? In fact, the surprise could sometimes more accurately be called a real shocker. I’d say yesterday’s little gift falls into that category. To prove it, thunder rumbled at times, capturing our attention even more. That’s right. Thunder during our snow storm. I guess that’s what happens when spring and winter collide.
Surprises and shocks many times arrive with incredibly bad timing — in weather and in life. The last thing any of us wanted on spring break was a major winter storm, but we didn’t get a vote. In the same way, sometimes life hands us situations at seemingly wrong times, wrong seasons. Just ask a young widower or a single mom trying to handle it all after her husband walked out on her. Or talk to a mom who’s seeing her youngest off to college while also wearing maternity clothes.
Maybe you’re faced with one of these wrong season situations or something similar like a scary diagnosis, the loss of a job, or a broken engagement. Or like us, as we’ve put some things on hold to help care for a parent in poor health, yours might be less drastic but still throw you for a loop.
So what do we do with these wrong season situations? We deal with them. We weather them. And if we’re wise, we run to God with them.
We don’t try to handle them on our own. We turn them over to the One who wasn’t surprised by them. The One who is fully able to work all things together for our good (Romans 8:28). The One who is able to “bestow on [us] a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of despair.” (Isaiah 61:3)
Come to think of it, maybe wrong season situations don’t happen in the wrong seasons after all…
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1
*My photo
**Update: Don’s mom has been doing better this past week! She, of course, is still in renal failure, but we never thought we’d see improvement at this stage of the game. We’re so thankful for more stable times. Thanks for all the prayers!
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