Season of Struggle

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, NKJV)

When we hear the word “season,” we typically think about yearly seasons—spring, summer, fall, and winter. In the South, where I live, seasons are often discussed as hunting, fishing, football, and gardening seasons! A business owner may think of “busy season” or “slow season.” Let’s not forget the Christmas season, the vacation season, and, of course, the flu season. We are familiar with many seasons, but they all have one thing in common. Each describes a time in our lives characterized by a specific event, feature, or circumstance.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 lists many particular circumstances that characterize different events in our lives.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”

Some of these seasons are characterized by events most consider happy times—birth, healing, laughing, dancing, embracing, love, and peace. We hope and pray that these are long seasons. We want them to hang around. We relish these joyful seasons when we are on top of the world. The kids (and spouse!) are behaving, and we have money in the bank. Our health is good, and our career is soaring. Our home is happy and peaceful, and our finances are stable. Everything is right in our world, and we are spiritually, physically, emotionally, and financially in a good season. These are the seasons we coast along smiling as we praise and thank God for His blessings.

But, the same verses that list all those seasons of life that we love and get excited about also list some seasons we would rather not endure.

None of us want to die. Of course, we all want to go to Heaven and live with Jesus for eternity, but we would much rather go in the Rapture than experience the process of actually dying.

We want to be healed, but that implies we must first be sick or suffer from some disease or infirmity. We don’t want to struggle with illness to experience healing.

No one enjoys weeping or mourning, meaning we have experienced great sadness or loss. No one wants to experience hate or go to war.

No one wants to lose anything (except maybe a little weight!)

All these negative seasons in our lives can be classified as seasons of struggle. Merriam-Webster defines struggle as 1) to make strenuous effort in the face of difficulties or opposition; 2) to proceed with difficulty or great effort. You might currently be in a “season of struggle” when you must make a strenuous effort in the face of difficulties in order to proceed. You might be struggling with family, health, job, or overwhelming debt. You may be experiencing depression, oppression, doubt, or other spiritual struggles. Whatever the struggle is, you don’t like it. No one does. We don’t want to struggle. We don’t see a purpose for the struggle.

However, Romans 8:28 states, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”  His purpose. Not ours. Yes, even your season of struggle has a purpose! How? Let’s talk chickens.

We have chickens. We hatched most of our fifty-one chickens ourselves. We gathered the eggs and put them in the incubator for twenty-one days. I watched them closely and turned them each day. Usually, about a day or so before they started hatching, we could hear them chirping inside their shell. Our excitement would build, and we would check them every hour or so to see if they were hatching.

Eventually, we would see one start “pipping,” breaking tiny holes in the shell. It might take hours, sometimes even into the next day, before it hatched. The entire time, I could see the little chick through the openings in the shell, pecking, kicking, and struggling to break free. It would struggle to the point of exhaustion, rest a little, and then keep struggling. I hated watching the chick struggle so badly and wanted to help.

So, during our first hatch, I Googled “How to help a chick hatch.”  The first site simply said, “Don’t! It’s the struggle that makes it strong enough to survive.” As the chick struggles to peck its way around the shell, the little neck muscles are developing the strength needed to move its head up and down to eat after it hatches. As the chick kicks against the shell repeatedly to break through, the leg muscles develop strength. It will need that strength to stand up, move around, find nourishment to survive and run away from predators seeking to kill and eat it. The little chick may be struggling, but it’s the struggle that makes it strong!

Whatever season of struggle you find yourself in, no matter how long the season lasts, you can rest assured that your struggle has a purpose, and God has a plan to work it out for your good. The purpose may be to make you stronger, but that, in itself, is enough. Strong means to have great power. As your struggle sends you to your knees, remember, that is where you learn to really pray. That is where you learn to trust God fully. As you wrestle with God in prayer, do like Jacob did. Hold on and refuse to let go or give up. That is when God will bless you. That is when you will find that you have great power with God not only in spite of your struggle but because of it. Your faith will soar to new heights, and before you realize it, your season of struggle will have passed. So, take heart, my friend, and remember, it’s the struggle that makes you strong!