I painted this quote on to a repurposed framed canvas when our family moved to DeLand. It felt so timely. Approaching a decade now, it hung in our dining room for years and has lived on the wall of our oldest’s bedroom since he moved out in 2024. A way to reorient my self back to Jesus, in the midst of relational seasons changing.

Here is the thing about God and His Word: He is immutable, forever constant and unchanging, but we, our relationships and our circumstances will always be evolving and transforming until the day He calls us “home.”

There is a social theory I came across a while ago, and though I don’t think it is fully factual because God works however He sees fit, it has marked the way I view my life and relationships. It has helped me savor them and changed how I grieve them when seasonal shifts begin its work of being just that, seasonal.

This theory focuses on how much a human life changes in five years and that the very person you were, inside and out, and the people you knew exactly five years ago are not the same. Even if that person is still in your life after the five year mark, you are both different in more ways than one can count. A relationship can transform from close to a stranger or from stranger to close in just five years simply because of how life happens, how our paths cross and where they fork again as we continue traveling on the path He has set before us.

My husband and I are not who we were when we got married almost twenty five years ago.  Our relationship is constantly evolving and transforming every single year.  My relationship with my children is not what it was when they were newborns. They, too, are drastically different at ages 5, 10, 15, and 20.  My parents are not who they were when I was born, almost fifty years ago, or even the same as five years ago.  Five years ago, there were so many people I had never met but God intersected our lives as He saw fit and now its hard to remember life before them. Five years ago, I thought certain relationships would be in my life forever, but they were just here for a season.

For as long as I can remember, I have carried the ache of relational changes with me.  I would even go as far to say I am wired (whether by nature or by nurture, though I know it is both) to try to keep everyone together, forever. For many years and for as long as I can remember, I carried a form of shame when relationships reached their seasonal changes, especially if I was the one notably changing in said season.

Just like how our earth’s seasons are shaped by it’s yearly revolution around and tilt in relationship to the sun, so our relationships find their seasons as each year passes and the seasons do their work in the depths of us.  Every earthly and relational season has their beauty, their hards and has their purposes in the life He gives us.

Maybe by diligently noting how much life happens in five years, we can loosen our grip  on trying to hold everything exactly as it was, savor it for what it is and let Jesus do the work He has marked for each of our relational seasons as His perfect portion.