Jesus: The Good in Every Season.

On a clear, spring day, I pulled up to a stoplight to visit my dad in the hospital for reasons related to his recent cancer diagnosis. Sitting at the red light, these pink and blue pom poms and balloons hanging from a tailgate tent in the hospital parking lot caught my attention as they swayed in the wind. As people gathered in their lawn chairs beneath the tent, I couldn’t help but notice how their joy and laughter spilled over into the street. Clearly awaiting the arrival of a new baby, the reasons for their visit stood in painful contrast to mine. 

I recalled that prior to this, my last visit to this hospital was when I too was expecting a baby. My parents even got to sit in an actual waiting room! Like salt in an open wound, I longed for the happier seasons when I had the happiest of reasons for going to the hospital. But on this picturesque day the circumstances surrounding my visit were nothing close to exuberant. 

As troublesome questions, and bitterness began to rise in me, I secretly contemplated popping every one of those tailgate balloons. It was then I was soothed by God’s whisper that said,

“Alicia, I am the good in both of those seasons.”

Seasons.

We all experience those tailgate seasons marked with overflowing joy and constant celebration. It feels like life can’t get any more perfect. Then God. And we are receiving gift after gift. Beautiful, treasurable moments. Then, the shift, the other season. That season full of trial, pain, struggle, the hard work, the agony of the unknown that has us hugging a porcupine in the corner.

The beautiful truth is that, in either season, the big faith comes when we can hold both up to God with open hands and view both seasons as gifts, because, in the end, we get more of Him.

I experienced a lot about the character of God in my joyful baby season that I never had before. Things like his fierce and unconditional love for me and his sheer delight in me. The truth that the way I believe in my sons and am always for them is the same way that God feels about me. While having been a believer for many years, I had a head knowledge of these truths, but it wasn’t until I walked through that season that I understood them in my heart.  On the flip-side of this, there are things we can’t learn about the character of God from the mountain tops or in this case baby tailgate parties. We can only learn them from the valleys of hospital rooms and cancer.

I’m not saying all seasons are good. We all know that  on this side of Heaven we face broken circumstances. I also don’t subscribe to the idea of a God who assigns trials to his kids out of anger or punishment. What I do believe is that God will walk us through whatever season we need to walk through to give us more of himself. I don’t always like it, but I can choose to trust Him. Very much like Jonah in the Bible, we can’t always gain a deep sense of knowing the sustaining grace and sufficiency of Christ until we get swallowed up by the whale.

Staring at my aging father sleeping deep in a hospital bed because just the visiting has made him tired, it feels like I’ve been swallowed by a whale. I confess I HATE this season. I don’t like this God gift at all.

But as Charles Spurgeon says, “As sure as God puts his children in the furnace, He will be in the furnace with them.” 

So whether I am tailgating or walking into a season marked with pain and things that seem unfair, I am learning that Jesus is my way through both. He is the only way I can hold all as a gift because the real gift, the true blessing is Jesus himself and that is SO good.