Seasons of Love. I saw a meme the other day where a kid asked their mom how many minutes were in a year. Predictably, the mom thought back to her adolescence and began singing the opening lines to the hit Rent song “Seasons of Love.”
The older I get, the more I am starting to think of segments of time in my life as seasons. Age, I guess, will give you that perspective. I can divide up the time into distinct seasons of my life. I find patterns and realities from seasons that may or may not exist in others. I’ve always loved the song “Seasons of Love.” While that song is focused on the timespan of a year, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately in relation to multi-year time spans of my life, distinct seasons of love.
We are days away from sending our youngest to kindergarten. A season of love in our home is almost officially over. For the first time since we became parents almost 13 years ago, we will no longer have a child who isn’t officially in full-time school. I have found myself reflecting on these years a lot; did I do enough? Did I cherish them enough? Did I live in this season enough?
Another season is gone, and all the cliches ring true: “Don’t blink,” “babies don’t keep,” “the days are long, but the years are short,” and a litany of others now seem to hold more gravitas as I reflect on the close of another season. While I can’t go back and rewind this season, what I do know to be true is that each season has brought (and will continue to bring) its own distinct characteristics. These characteristics are what define each season. Since life is a journey of a thousand different experiences, some seasons are bound to be more fondly remembered than others. Each season will not be all one thing or another. Life is too nuanced to be easily categorized and labeled like that. Each season will undoubtedly contain a multitude of blessings and challenges. There will be times we didn’t know we could be so tired or find such inner strength to persevere. Other times we will look so fondly upon the moments of a season that we will wish we could bottle it up and carry that season of love on with us.
I joke a lot with my kids that they don’t have to grow up and that they can choose to stay little. They will inevitably roll their eyes and tell me I’m wrong. They’re correct. The hard truth is that time is a thief, and each season will inevitably end. All we can do is try to make the most of the time we have in these seasons and know that we have lived each season the best we could. My goal is always to be able to say I relished the bright spots and learned from the challenges, that I loved the best I could during that season with what was available for me at the time. I always hope that my seasons are measured in seasons of love.
No matter what season you are currently in, whether it lasts a year or multiple, remember the only thing constant is change, and no season will last forever. And for the record, there are 525,600 minutes in a year. I hope that much of it is measured in love.
