by Kristi Williams Fontenot

For many people, myself included, this past season of life has just been hard. Looking back, the last few years have come with many trials and setbacks that have often left me wondering if we were ever going to get through this and return to life as we once knew it. Life threw us all the biggest curve ball at the exact same moment, and no one knew it was coming or how to prepare for it. In some ways, life stopped for a season. And for some, it may still be hard to look at what is ahead and see a clear path. The truth is life did stop for most of us in one way or another. But through the trials God so graciously whispered to me, I’m not done yet. Four words that brought peace to my heart and soul that I didn’t even know I needed to hear. But God knew, and by speaking those words to me He was speaking power into me to pick back up where the world not that long ago had left off because Gods not done with me yet. 

Everyone has a story they could share of the struggles and pain they experienced over the last two or more years. For my family owning a new restaurant brought about struggles so hard I often cried on my bathroom floor wondering how we would make it. I am sure some of my neighbors in our shopping center thought I was crazy as I would circle the parking lot praying that God would get not only us through it, but that He would also meet the needs of the other businesses in the shopping center. But what I want to share for a moment is how my son handled the setbacks that life would soon hand him. 

Some may say it is hard for a child to truly understand the difficulties we all walked through during this time. But life didn’t just stop for us, it stopped for our children too. When Covid changed the life of so many, my son was wrapped up in the middle of what should have been his senior year of high school and his senior year of baseball. But like many, his year abruptly came to an end. The things he once thought he wanted was taken away from him in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately for him, his sophomore year of baseball was also taken from him just two years earlier. His sophomore year he was the starting short stop for our high school and batting leadoff. A few games into the season with one swing of the bat he fractured his lower back. We all watched as he crawled to make it to first base in the worst pain I had ever seen him in. That year he did come back just in time for playoffs but for my son, his sophomore year and senior year of baseball were stolen from him in a matter of seconds. As a mother those are some of the hardest moments that I have ever had in raising my children. I still remember when we got the message saying his senior year of baseball was canceled. It was like reliving the moment the doctor told us his back was fractured. I held him while he cried in my arms. Things he had worked his whole life to get to were gone. Dreams of playing college ball were slipping through his fingers like water. Life happened and there was nothing we could do to change that. The truth is moments in life change you. Things have happened to all of us that changed our paths in life forever. Where we go from this point forward is the only thing we can control. Recently he called me to talk on his way to college. I told him what I had been writing recently and we had a great conversation about re-starting life. He told me how God had placed on his heart that while everyone’s life had been paused, now is the time to get started and create something new! Maybe it is time to take that new path God has placed before you. Or maybe God has opened your eyes to what is truly important in life, and it is time for you to take a bold step towards that. Maybe you are thankful that now, looking back, you can see how God got you through every hardship and it is time to become a new person in Christ. Whatever your “new” is, now is the time to do it! Now, at twenty-one years old he knows and understands that the past is the past and now is the time to move forward into what God has planned for him in this next season of life. Sometimes we teach our children, and sometimes they teach us. I would say he taught me a few things by the time we ended that conversation.

Right now, I think it is so important to know that God created you for a purpose. John 1:3 says, “God created everything through Him, and nothing was created except through Him.” God did not create you by mistake. In fact, you were thought of and created with intention. Life did happen to each of us, and there is nothing that you can do to change that. But where you go from here is up to you. Your purpose did not end when the world stopped two plus years ago. Or maybe, like my son, your purpose changed. The past is the past and the future is all we truly have. God wants each of us to step into this new season with a new perspective knowing that while life may have been paused, now is the time to just get started!

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:19