Trusting the Season I Am In

I have never thought of life in the form of seasons before. It wasn’t until I read something recently when I was doing my daily devotional that I started to restructure the way that I think about the progress that we make in life. It kind of seems like I’m restructuring a few things lately. I suppose when you see that something isn’t working, you do what you can to fix it right? Most of the time that is true but this particular devotional that I read made me question that rationale. It proposed the idea that often times the progress that we think we should be making in life doesn’t happen in a loud and obvious way. The movements that we desire to make towards our goals don’t always happen in giant leaps or loud booms.

A lot of times when we see the end result of someone’s success story, we don’t grasp that thousands, possibly millions, of tiny little baby steps were likely taken on their journey towards that end goal. We don’t see the less obvious, quieter movements that someone went through to get to the end result we are seeing. For instance when I finally reach my destination and I am on the other end of my goals, the result where I am a wildly successful author, fully able to not only survive, but also thrive on the sheer writing alone (okay well other processes of the writing career as well), there won’t be many people that will know anything about the micro-steps that this journey held for me.

The personal struggles and childhood traumatic events that fueled the pain and devastation that were infused into the poetry that started everything for me. The relationships that broke me but at the same time, fueled some of the important messages and narratives in some of my earlier writing, hell some of my more recent writing too. The professional ups and downs of trying to do the practical things that society insists you do just so you can be able to quietly work on the things you’re more passionate about, which, for me, is writing. My life has definitely had a lot of seasons that I’ve gone through but none of been more trying for me than this most recent one.

The season where I lost my home of 23 years and was basically shoved down to rock bottom and left with practically nothing. I have never felt more stuck in my life than I have since losing the home I made for me and my daughter. I had thought that I was on my way to finally achieving a lot of what I had been working towards on my journey. And then just like that, with the snap of a finger, it felt like the rug was pulled from underneath me and I was left feeling immensely frustrated and confused.

I was also left feeling majorly depressed having to be reduced to coming back and living in a place that reignites all of my childhood trauma and makes the days miserable at almost every turn. In reading this devotional the other day, there was a line that said, ‘not every season is designed for visible progress.’ It feels like I’m somehow stuck between where I was before and where I want to be when all is said and done. It feels sometimes like I’m not making any traction but that is not entirely true.

The reality is that the traction I’m making is in small parts, and the movements aren’t loud and they don’t always look like much to someone who is on the outside looking in. Hell, sometimes I don’t even see the progress until I am editing a video of mine or until I sit down and really take stock and write down all that was done on my most recent trek on the journey and then I realize, oh there it is. There is the progress, I just needed to actually sit down and really look at it and take it in.

That’s the thing about wanting to build a sustainable, lasting, strong writing career, or any career really. Sustainability isn’t going to look like overnight success. Long lasting building blocks don’t just magically assemble themselves in a quick and orderly fashion. That’s just not how most things work. Even when we see these success stories that we want to somehow model our lives after, we are seeing the end result so to us it looks like it happened rapidly and with very little effort, but we really have no idea the backstory of these success stories. We don’t typically see the struggles and the rock-bottom periods that they likely went through to get what they wanted.

We tend to misunderstand the seasons that we are in and that oftentimes leads us to trying to force movement in one direction or another before it is time to make the next move. In the moments when we think that we’re failing or like everything that we’ve been working on is wasted, remember that you may not be as stuck as you think you are. Think of it as being in a season of stillness, where things around you are still forming and taking shape to prepare you for what is to come on your next leg of the journey. This season that you are in may not be the one you expected to be in but take comfort in those small steps you are making towards the dreams you say you want because there is so much value in those small steps. You may not see it right in the moment but it’s only just a season. This too shall pass!

Until next time… #BeMindful #BeDiligent #BePatient

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Jimmetta Carpenter

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