A time to heal…..

When you get immersed in a chronically ill community, you meet so many amazing warriors fighting for breath, for life, for their families with such courage and conviction. You grab on for the ride with their highs and lows and celebrate their successes, no matter how small or large.

In fact, when you are immersed in any tight-knit community, you ride the waves of this life with its highs and lows, crying, praying, and celebrating with joy their successes. The longer you are in it, you cannot escape its ebbs and flows through good and bad.

As I was reading this scripture last night in Ecclesiastes, I can resonate living through many of these seasons in my own weathered life and watched them pass through for those in my Lyme circle and close family and friends.

Today marks a change of season and I am struck by the reminder that seasons do, in fact, turn. So I look around and take stock and the Lord shows me the turn of seasons for many I have been weeping with.

Today I have a heart friend that has passed through a season “mourning into dancing”. I have a Lyme friend who is in her “time of building ” and on the cusp of her “time to heal”, another who is in her “time to laugh”, a widowed husband in his “time to build”. Just a few years ago it seemed there were only “times of weeping and mourning” everywhere I looked, but as seasons go, they pass on and go on to another.

There is a time  for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

Spring and Summer always come. The seasons always turn. Some last longer than we can fathom, but they will turn. Some seasons whisk by in a heartbeat barely able to soak them up. Sometimes the days are long, but the years are short.

If you are in a season of woe, I pray you hang on to the changing seasons. They will turn. Light will dance about you through family, friends, and eventually your own health and well being. How we feel on the outside begins deep within our soul.

Use the season to do as the scripture says. Maybe in your “winter” you need to search, or throw away, or mourn, or embrace.

Search for more answers in healing.

Throw away relationships that are negative and dragging you down.

Mourn the past and let it be the past.

Embrace the new normal and where God has placed you.

Build new relationships based on truth and real heart connections.

Give up the busy worldly stuff and focus on what matters – family and friends.

Speak up and be an encouragement to others struggling.

There is a time in the season of “winter” that spring seems obsolete – an impossibility. But the thaw comes, the rivers are set free from their icy chamber and the buds burst forth beauty. The Lord is not absent of any season. He created them all. Without winter, we would not appreciate the new fragrance of spring. Without sadness, would laughter be so uplifting?

To comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty  instead of ashes, the oil of  joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise  instead of a spirit of despair. (Isaiah 61: 3)

Congratulations this day of healing and dancing for my dear friends getting married! As you enter your new season, let your marriage be an “oak of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.” (Isaiah 61:4)

Be amazed with me after long seasons of weeping and mourning, that indeed the seasons turn and show their bright colors of gladness.

Blessings and healing,

Janice Fairbairn

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