We can't BEAR lasting fruit without outlasting BARE seasons
We can’t BEAR lasting fruit without outlasting the BARE seasons.
A bare season is a time in your life when much of the foliage in your life has been cleared away. Be it through changing seasons or the deep pruning of a wise and careful Gardener, bare seasons may coincide with shifts in the circumstances in your life or it may be a season within your soul oddly invisible to those around you.
Here are some other ways you may recognize a bare season:
You don’t feel like you have much to show for your efforts.
There’s a feeling of exposure or vulnerability that’s uncomfortable but perhaps also liberating.
Good things may be happening but it’s definitely not a harvest season.
Your heart feels tender, and tears come more easily.
You feel restless about getting past the season you’re in.
You’re starting to see differently.
Some things you once assumed are suddenly up for examination.
You feel like you are changing but you don’t yet have language to describe how you’re changing.
You’ve been unsettled from whatever your normal was and you feel suspended between how things were and how things will be going forward. Like someone traversing a hanging wood suspension bridge, there’s something about this season that’s requiring a level of intentionality and care that other seasons didn’t seem to require.
Bare seasons can be a mix of longing, grief, hope and healing. Everyone is unique. But we need to settle this truth deep down,
bare-ness does not equal barrenness.
It’s impossible for you to be barren when you’re connected to the Vine.
I know that leafless trees and dead trees look very similar in winter but friend, when spring comes, the live ones will bloom again.
Your season of bare-ness is not wasted. It’s essential.
You’re not on the back burner. You are being tended by a Father who is caring and intentional in all that he does. Bare seasons are meant to bring us into a unique time of experiencing His kindness toward us – not because of what we produce – but because of who He is and who we are to Him.
Remain in the Vine. The deep work happening inside of you is more holy and important than you know.
Do not abort the process. The harvest will come if we faint not.
“Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.” Galatians 6:9
John 15:1-5 TPT
“I am the true sprouting vine, and the farmer who tends the vine is my Father. He cares for the branches connected to me by lifting and propping up the fruitless branches and pruning every fruitful branch to yield a greater harvest. The words I have spoken over you have already cleansed you. So you must remain in life-union with me, for I remain in life-union with you. For as a branch severed from the vine will not bear fruit, so your life will be fruitless unless you live your life intimately joined to mine. I am the sprouting vine and you’re my branches. As you live in union with me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you – but when you live separated from me you are powerless.”
Hannah Savage 4/5/23