Seasons

I was driving the kids to work this morning and we saw things that we haven't seen for a solid year. What we saw may not, on the face of it, appear to profound. The more i think about it, however, the more profound it becomes.
So, what did we see?
Leaves...
We saw falling leaves. There are certain trees along our drive into school and work that just release all their leaves in the space of a day. The leaves are still green, but falling nonetheless. It's like a constant flurry of leaves. Other trees, like the huge, strong, cottonwoods, hold on to theirs. Their leaves slowly lose their green color and turn into a brilliant ocher yellow. The leaves eventually turn brown and the tree hangs onto them sometimes up until the spring winds blow the leaves off allowing for the tree to renew again.
I think that we are all connected and everything hear has a purpose and a season.
We have our seasons too. We go through times of spring where things grow and develop. We go through times of prosperity where we reap the benefits of the work we put in in the spring. We also go through times of loss times of struggle. We all have seasons of fall and winter.
We each have, at one point or another, dying leaves that may burden us. How do we handle those? Do we instantly release our leaves? Do we hold onto those dying burdens clinging on to history until the very last second? How do we handle our adversities?
Regardless of the answer to that, what we can look forward to is spring again. In the deepest cold of winter when the world is frozen and things appear completely lifeless, there are seeds in the ground preparing to break through the frozen ground. A new season is about to spring forward. And the deeper the cold the more snow that piles up on top of the world the more brilliant the spring is.

Nothing is too overwhelming, though it may seem at the time to be so.

My suggestion, release your leaves, endure your winter, and be excited for your spring.