The Four Seasons
What Sourdough Has Taught Me About Trusting the Next Season
This morning, during prayer, my thoughts wandered somewhere unexpected.
The seasons.
I couldn't quite explain why.
Perhaps it was because August has a way of whispering that summer won't last forever.
Perhaps it was because I caught myself thinking about cooler mornings, changing leaves, pumpkin-shaped loaves, and the quiet anticipation that always seems to arrive before autumn itself.
I've always loved the changing of the seasons.
There is something deeply comforting about them.
Not because I hurry through one to reach the next.
Quite the opposite.
Each season seems to know exactly when its work is finished.
Spring quietly gives way to summer.
Summer slowly loosens its grip as autumn arrives.
Autumn never clings to its leaves.
Winter never apologizes for its stillness.
There is a rhythm to creation that never seems anxious.
Nothing rushes.
Nothing forces itself.
Nothing fears what comes next.
As I sat with those thoughts this morning, I found myself wondering...
Why does all of this remind me of sourdough?
I smiled.
Because, of course it does.
Sourdough has been teaching me about the seasons from the very beginning.
Not the seasons outside my kitchen window.
The seasons inside my life.
Every loaf begins with a feeding.
Then waiting.
Then quiet fermentation.
Expansion.
Rest.
Shaping.
Another rest.
Finally...
The heat of the oven.
Every stage prepares the dough for the next.
None of them can be skipped.
The dough never argues with the process.
It simply becomes what it was created to become.
Creation works the same way.
So do we.
As I thought about my own life, I realized how many seasons have quietly shaped me.
There was the season of being my father's little girl, following him from swim meet to swim meet every summer.
The season of becoming a wife.
Then a mother.
The season of losing myself.
The season of addiction.
The season of grief.
The season of beginning again.
The season of discovering sourdough.
The season of opening a bakery.
The season of writing a book.
None of those seasons lasted forever.
None of them were wasted.
Each one carried something I would need for the one that followed.
Perhaps that is why I find such comfort in autumn.
Autumn has never struck me as a season of endings.
It has always felt like a season of trust.
The trees don't mourn every leaf that falls.
They simply let go.
Not because they are dying.
Because they know another season is coming.
There is such wisdom in that.
I wonder how much of our anxiety comes from resisting the season we are standing in.
We want spring while we're still in winter.
We long for harvest while we're still planting.
We want certainty while God is still teaching us trust.
Sourdough has never allowed me to rush.
The dough is ready when it is ready.
No amount of impatience changes that.
The seasons don't hurry either.
Neither does grace.
Lately, I've been thinking about how much of my life has been spent asking,
"What's next?"
Perhaps there is a better question.
"What is this season asking of me?"
Those are very different prayers.
One looks ahead.
The other pays attention.
I think God has been teaching me the second.
This season has asked me to bake.
To write.
To rest.
To pay attention.
To gather evidence of grace.
To remain teachable.
To celebrate other people's successes without comparing them to my own.
To trust that the work He has given me today is enough for today.
And somehow...
Sourdough has become the classroom where I keep learning those lessons.
I used to think I was simply learning how to bake bread.
Now I wonder if bread has quietly been teaching me how to live.
Maybe that's why the changing of the seasons feels so deeply familiar.
They remind me that life was never meant to be lived all at once.
Only one season at a time.
Only one loaf at a time.
Only one faithful day at a time.
And perhaps that is where peace has been waiting all along.
Not in arriving.
But in learning to love the season I have been given.
Warmly,
Kathy
Art of The Crumb