Seasons

There are seasons in my life in which I love God deeply. Inevitably, these are followed by seasons in which I can't figure out if I even know who God is anymore, let alone if I love Him. 

Let alone if He loves me. 

It's a tough place to be in. Always questioning the faith. Always missing those things that made me so sure in a season that seems both not that long ago at all and yet, somehow, an entire lifetime away. 

When I stepped into ministry more than a decade ago, I felt the love of God deeply. I felt it in the way that He poured into me when I was pouring myself out, every day. I felt it in the way that the worship music thumped deep in my soul like a bass boost during my hour-plus commute each way. I felt it in the way that I stood a little taller (literally - I gained an inch in that season), in the way that I found the strength to look in the mirror, in the way that I saw the tenderness in my own hands. There was something unquestionable about God in that season. 

Then...life. And I entered a new season. A season marked by more questions. By roadblocks. Not so much by wandering as by wondering - wondering where I go from here. What the next step is. What the last season meant in this season. Why the God I had grown so close to had suddenly become what felt like so quiet, so distant. 

This season was a season of struggle. Deep struggle. Physical, emotional, financial, spiritual struggle. Not for any particular reason except that, well, the things I had been so sure of didn't seem so certain any more and I was wrestling in that place that pulls us between what God says and what the world allows. I was certain I knew where God wanted me, but I was running up against a world that seemed committed to making sure I could never get there.

At some point in this season, I found God anew once again in the weirdest of all ways. In a time when I was worried about where I was going and what I was doing and how I was going to make it, let alone survive, God started meeting me in the most unexpected places with provision. Weird provision. Opportunities. Gifts. Blessings. Poured out like I had never experienced them before in my life...and haven't since. And I came to understand that God was loving me even then, and I began to rely on these provisions to nourish my soul in those places that kept questioning. Until...one day, I realized I wasn't questioning any more. 

Ah, yes. God is still God. God is still good. God still loves me. Things are okay. 

Then...life. Another transition. Another new season. One that has been blessed from the very start of it, only to come into a sort of rough patch of growth later. A season that was clearly God's next good thing for me and yet, there's something empty about it. Those little provisions that I had come to love, to rely on, to use to fuel my soul...they're gone. Those things haven't happened any more. Much as the thump in the depths of my soul that I felt to the worship as God poured into me hasn't really happened since two seasons ago. 

And it's hard. It's hard because I know I still love God. At least, I think I do. But there are all of these questions again. This weird gnawing...emptiness where all the things that made me solid in seasons past don't work here, and there are days that I wonder...is the love still there? Is it still deep? Am I losing something? Is this what drifting away feels like? Will those things I always loved about my special relationship with God ever come back? In the same way? In a new way? 

There are a thousand questions, and I don't know the answers to them. But then, I realize that at the beginning of every other season, I didn't know the answers, either. But they came. And they were good. And they were wonderful. 

So maybe it's about just holding on.