Springtime: The early, falling in love part of a relationship correlates with spring. Everything is beautiful and full of promise and hope. There’s the promise of what’s yet to come, what’s going to grow there. It’s easy to be excited and happy in this stage. Summer: After spring comes summer. That’s a glorious time of growth. That’s the season of a relationship when we commit fully to each other and start to build lives that are intertwined. This may be the season of having children, or career focus, but, the warmth of summer expands us and kind of opens us up to everything that life has to offer. Fall: Then you move into fall. Fall is typically a time of harvest and gathering in. It can be a really beautiful time with the lovely colors that we enjoy so much about autumn. Underneath this lovely autumness, something is decaying. We don’t notice because we’re distracted by the loveliness that fall holds. The cooler temperatures in the fall also cause us to gather inside or layer up, becoming protective of ourselves. Conflict and stressors in our relationship tempt us into defending ourselves from each other as well. We close ourselves off and start to create coolness when we enter into the “fall” of a relationship. The aloofness inside our most important relationships can sometimes be a signal that something is changing there, dying maybe and we need to pay close attention to that. Winter: When winter is upon us, the cold weather becomes nearly unbearable. If we’re going to venture out in winter then we really have to protect ourselves. Even in approaching our partner there may be hostilities that are at a crescendo. Maybe we’ve withdrawn so far we can’t even find our partner in the chill of winter. But, there’s another aspect of winter that we can call into play. It’s also a time of warming up by the fireplace or sipping hot cocoa snuggled up under a warm blanket with someone that you love. A season of winter can be a time of reconnection and we know it’s going to lead to a new spring. Just like the seasons demonstrated by nature, our relationship is going to move through these cycles. If we recognize this, we can rest assured that winter leads to fall and it doesn’t necessarily signal the end of a relationship. We often get into those fall and winter times when our relationship isn’t as close and we see it as the death of the relationship. Winter is when we leave relationships because we feel there’s nothing there, nothing green left there. In winter it’s all covered up with snow. If you didn’t know better when you looked around in winter, you’d think everything is dead. But, our life experiences now tell us if we wait it out, grass will start to come up again in the spring. So, the same thing can be true when we sow into or nurture our relationships. We can grow through those cold times. Practice time: What season is your relationship in? Are you allowing the season to grow your relationship, or are you looking at it only from what it appears to be on the surface? Ask yourself honestly those questions and, how can you make the most of the season that you’re in? You know, there are seasons, there are tasks to do with every season in nature as well as in our relationships. There are seasons to sow into; seasons to defend, protect, go within, and turn towards each other. How can you make the most of the season that you’re in? If you’re willing to share, make a comment below and tell us what season your relationship seems to be in. Remember, every season has it’s own beauty because even conflict is an opportunity to grow. How are you going to make the most of this season? Let me know how it’s going with you! Email me here. Seasonally yours, Allison
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