It never fails: During the latter half of fall and all of the Christmas season, I want crisp weather. Wool coats. Mulled cider. Cornflower skies. Cozy scarves. Pies, warm and fresh from the oven.

Then January 2 rolls around, the holidays come screeching to a halt, and I’m ready to move on. To springtime. Sundresses. Bare toes. Baby animals. Lots and lots of baby animals. And fresh flowers. Or sometimes even weeds that look like flowers.
I only like a season — literal or figurative — to last as long as it serves my purposes. Impatient and ready to set my own agenda and schedule, sometime I forget to stop and consider whether what God has put before me is, in fact, exactly what I need for this time in my life. It’s a bad habit I’ve carried with me since childhood: I was ready to hurry through my early years and become a teenager; then I felt antsy to rush through college and “begin” my life; at that same time, I was anxious to skip the whole “relationship” step to dive right into marriage (Danny was too well-grounded to let that one happen, thank goodness).

But, more and more, I’ve seen that my journey has unfolded at the right pace, with each new phase unfurling like a petal at just the right time to shape  my life into a beautiful bloom. My marriage wouldn’t be so wonderful, so nurturing and supportive, if Danny and I had jumped into it before we had a chance to really discover who the other person is and work out our relationship’s quirks and kinks. Even this photography business wouldn’t be something I’d be thrilled  to wake up to each morning if I’d been able to rush its growth at the pace I first envisioned. But because it has grown organically, developing its own personality and offering me the opportunity to grow with it, it is.

So what I’m learning — more slowly than I should — is that my life has rarely stuck to my own pre-planned schedule. I didn’t lose my last baby tooth until I was 17. I didn’t get my driver’s license until 19. That was the same year my braces (which I had to get as a result of that late-leaving baby tooth) came off. But while some of my friends were working in coffee shops and burger joints through college, I was writing for a newspaper, already several miles down my anticipated career path while my friends were still trying to settle on their majors. It hasn’t ever mattered where I thought I would or should be at any stage of my life — which I’m very grateful for now, because 12-year-old me was convinced 22-year-old me would already be a mother. What has mattered is getting my own preconceived notions aligned with reality. Given the track record of how well things have worked out, that’s getting easier and easier. My timing has been bad in the past. God’s hasn’t.

~ Laura