I follow several lovely ladies on social media and one of them, Emily P Freeman, invites people to join along in chronicling “what I learned this season.”  I love the idea of pausing four times a year to check in with my life.  I tried to start the habit of joining in sometime last year – but life got in the way of checking in with life and so the story goes.  Maybe this time it will stick.

What I learned this Spring:

1. I enjoy life when I have quality time with my friends much better than without.  This spring, work and kid activities took over my life and the thing that got cut out was my time with my friends.  I have plans this summer to be a little more consistent with some girlfriends this summer and I feel so much more settled knowing that I’m making an effort to clear a little pool of time in the schedule.

2. As much as I hate it, one of my very first reactions to unexpected and stressful life situations is anxiety.  We had some stressful, landscape-changing things happen on the work front this spring.  For a couple days I felt waves of useless adrenaline coursing through my body and my mind alternately felt frozen or went spinning out possible scenarios into a dystopian future.  Rather than pretend that’s not what I naturally do, I’m noticing it.  Which lead to:

3. I can control my responses to life situations –  I don’t have wallow in my natural reactions to them. My pastor is working his way through Matthew on Sundays and he said recently, “Jesus will tweak your expectations, the question is, what will you do with Jesus when He does?”  Over and over the Bible tells us there will be trials.  What matters most is not the situation itself, but our response to it.  Our response to the trials either brings us closer to Jesus or hardens our hearts and keeps Jesus from coming nearer to us.  Sanctification, I’m learning, is God’s process of tweaking our expectations and training us to respond through His Spirit.  Rather than despair and worry when circumstances unexpectedly skew, God is training me to look in faith to His character: goodness, love, and kindness.

4. I enjoy the Marvel movies.  I watched Thor: Ragnorok and Avengers: Infinity War and just thought they were fun.  Fantasy that doesn’t take itself too seriously is my jam.

5. My metabolism is slowing down, so I need to eat slower and listen to my body when it tells me I’m full.  It’s either that, or, the way things are going, I’ll need to purchase all new pants.

What about you?  What did you learn this spring?