Seasons in life are funny things. We all experience them, but we rarely talk about them.

Seasons can be broken up by ages. There is the season of being a child, a tween, teenager — the experience of middle school and high school, and then college. You might think of them in decades, your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s and so on.

Sometimes when it comes to ages, we long to move on and be older. Sometimes we wish we could go backward.

Some think of seasons in terms of jobs, their career. They are starting, starting over, moving up and moving down.

Or we think of seasons in terms of relationships. Alone, falling in love, falling out of love, getting married, having kids.

Even parenting has its seasons: the beginning, the sleepless nights, the physical demands of young kinds, the emotional needs of teenagers, the school activities, being an empty nester, the demands of caring for aging parents.

The reality is, we are all in a season. And sometimes, we are experiencing seasons simultaneously.

Here’s the problem with seasons, we rarely talk about them. We rarely identify the one we are in currently.

Here’s why this matters: the season you are in is unique. For example, our kids range from 7 – 14 in age. Our season of parenting is drastically different today than it was when we had three kids under 3 and a half. It is very different from our friends who just took their youngest to college. It has unique challenges and unique blessings.

We often get jealous of someone else’s season. We long to be married when we’re single. We can’t wait to sleep through the night when our kids are young. We wish our bodies felt younger as we age. When we get jealous of someone else’s season but we don’t take into account the difficult parts of their seasons, their challenges, only the benefits.

Not only is each season unique, but each season has its challenges and its blessings. If you’re frustrated with your season right now, more than likely, you are only focusing on the challenges and missing out on the benefits of it. And if you do that, you will miss that season and what you are supposed to learn and discover in that season.