Changing Seasons in Nature and Life Benefit Our Lives

Posted On 29 September 2021

Last updated on April 9th, 2024

As summer has given way to autumn, it got me thinking about the changing of the seasons. Not only do we have four seasons in nature, we also have seasons in our lives.

A big change of season in my life occurred when my daughter got married earlier this month. I do not feel like I gave my daughter away…I feel like I gained a son-in-law! While she was living out of town for the summer, this is different. She and her husband have started traveling down their own path.

Our Children

Sometimes it seems that children are in our lives to give us grey hair while it is our responsibility to teach them how to be competent adults. Not only should we teach our children how to cook, clean, drive, and work, we need to teach them about personal finances and how to use the rules of the game in their favor. We did what we could to prepare our daughter for this exciting, new chapter in her life. While she has this change in her life, my wife & I are also starting a new chapter in our lives with a child that is married and our second child that just turned 18.

Some people are in our lives for seasons, we also have things in our lives for a season or many seasons. We don’t always know why or when the seasons in our life will change, just know that change is the one thing that will remain constant.

My First Smart phone

I have a story about an item that was in my life for a very short season. When a person gets a phone on a 2-year term, they expect to use that phone for the whole two years.

It was Black Friday, 2012, that my wife and I got our first smartphones. We had flip phones in the early 2000’s when we lived in Idaho. After we moved to Canada, we just didn’t need a cell phone, so we simply didn’t have one.

In the fall of 2012, my wife started thinking about getting a smart phone. As I mentioned, it was Black Friday. She surprised me by dragging me into the store and she said both of us could get phones! We didn’t have to pay anything in the store, and the monthly plan was reasonable. That evening we walked out of the store – each with a brand new HTC Desire C.

I Got A Job

The phone was just an entry-level phone. We had new “toys”! Ok, she got her phone so she could get texts from work when extra shifts were available. I brought mine with me when I went to my sister’s wedding in California. Since I didn’t have a travel package, my wife & I experimented with using an Internet-based app to call each other. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked!

Well, after Christmas, a local electronics store was hiring. With some hands-on smart phone experience and lots of self-education and “hobby experience” working on computers, I applied for the job and I got it.

Early Upgrade

After 90 days on the job I was able to get a phone and put it on the corporate plan, which was an even better deal than what we had with the other provider. At first, I was not interested in getting a new phone, as I already had a new phone!

It did make sense that if I were selling phones, I should have a premium phone and have a plan with the company I was promoting. So, less than 4 months after getting my first smartphone, I had my second phone! This new phone was the Samsung Galaxy Note II.

If I had not gotten that first phone, I would not have gotten that job selling phones, which really helped our finances! Sometimes things can be in our life for a shorter season than expected. I would have laughed if I had been told when I got that HTC phone that I would be upgrading my phone in a few months. While upgrading my phone so soon cost more, the value that I got from the HTC far outweighed the cost.

Listen to You Spouse

I make a point to listen to my wife. We are a partnership, and we work together. I wrote about that here. While I really like computers, I was not really interested in getting a smartphone.

Now, I should also point out that when we got those little HTC phones, I was out of work. Unemployment had run out for me. While my wife was working and making just barely enough to cover the bills, money was tight.

I didn’t think that getting phones was a good idea, although I did listen to her when she said that we would be able to afford the phones and that she felt that we should get them.

A New Door

Usually, when one door closes, another door opens. Sometimes, when a door opens we should walk through an then close the door behind us. The important thing is to understand that we need to focus on the door we have just walked through and to leave the closed door in the past.

Change can be full of uncertainty. Change usually causes us to struggle in some way. If we evaluate the situation and then proceed in the direction we are being lead, things usually work out.

We have the choice to be excited or sad when we see the seasons changing in our life. I have found that new seasons bring new opportunities. It will be exciting to see what awesomeness lies in store for us.

The Price

I am not encouraging my readers to spend recklessly. We need to be good stewards with our money. This story about my first smart phone was simply to demonstrate that sometimes we don’t get as much use out of something as we initially expected.

There are times that we will not get the expected value out of something. Then, there are other times when we get more out of something than we ever thought we could get out of it. For everything there is a price, and we must pay that price.

We also have seasons in our life for reasons. Often, we don’t know the reason we have to go through something until later. The blessing is that each season we go through makes us better if we choose to get better.