Salt’n’Peppa … no, it’s not a reference to a ‘90’s pop band, nor is it a reference to two seasoning staples perched on cupboard shelves throughout the country – ones that I relied on with blind trust during the first year of Newlywed Cuisine Adventures. I wish it were that simple or even those days again – although they are a scant seven years past.

Shockingly to our “I’m-still-as-young-as-college-days” mindsets, it’s the emerging state of my husband’s and my hair.

The other night upon returning home from work and giving me my hello hug, my husband tilted his head back and pointed his finger to his chin. Standing just under chin level and squinting into the ‘70’s kitchen lighting of our rented duplex, I didn’t notice them amidst the stubble at first. But there they were. White chin hairs. Plural. When my husband lowered his chin, I could see the light of incredulous disbelief flickering in his eyes. Which didn’t cast a favorable glow on the white hairs standing stubbornly upright amid the slightly teased crown of my ponytailed head. It was as though at the very moment I had became pregnant with our second child, three more grey hairs had popped out and stood at wiry attention as though it was their job to bring me such exciting news. This happened with the first child. Hair became an issue. Hair of the wrong color. Hair in the wrong places. Hair falling out of good places, like my head, leaving ample room for grey hairs to sneak in.

So there my husband and I stood in the kitchen, a tiresome and queasy thirteen weeks after the grey hairs made their follicle announcement, gazing at each other and realizing we were no longer playing out the acts of life on the same stage that we felt we had been center on for so long. The invincible stage. The forever-young stage. The lower stress stage.

It’s a new season. Not a bad one, just a different one. One with many new joys, loves and fulfillment. One we would never trade.

God’s been reminding me throughout the past years of having a toddler and seeing that new life birthed and tending to that life that I’m not the same person I was years earlier. That I’m not the child or the teen or the college student anymore. That right now, I’m the wife and mother. A new season. As Solomon said, To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven (Ecc. 3:1 NKJV).

And it’s good to enjoy the season I’m in – not to mourn over the passing of the previous seasons or strain my gaze toward those yet to come. The grey hairs I’ve accumulated in my pregnancies are a reminder of the precious gifts of His beautiful children He’s put on loan to me. For this season. So I will enjoy it all. …there’s nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life… make the most of your job. It’s God’s gift (Ecc.3:13 Message).

God is seasoning me. He is seasoning my husband. We feel God growing and stretching us. I pray that we are found faithful and changed on the inside – not just follicly salt’n’peppa’d. It’s a new season. And God is in each one.