“Golf Season”

Our golf season this year was, in a word….fleeting.

It began with the usual optimism as we arrived at Alsation RV Resort in April, when the cold air finally warmed up enough to reveal patchy, dormant fairways. We managed a couple of chilly rounds, bundled in windbreakers and knit hats, convincing ourselves that the feeling in our fingertips would return eventually.

May offered a brief, glorious window of sunshine. The course greened up almost overnight, the putts rolled true, and we squeezed in several satisfying rounds, confident that this was the start of a long, perfect summer of golf.

Then June arrived, bringing with it not the summer warmth we anticipated, but very “hot” temperatures, and our schedule quickly filled with family celebrations. Our clubs sat in Big Dee, growing a layer of dust that mirrored our disappointment.

Next thing we knew, it was July, and the summer felt half-gone. We managed a few rounds, but the season never quite regained its momentum.

In early September, we gathered with fellow RVers in Elkhart, where a surprise frost hit the region, followed shortly after by a cold snap that signaled the inevitable, and pending, arrival of winter.

And just like that, the flags were pulled from the greens, and it felt like all courses had officially shut down for aeration and the season. Our 2025 golf narrative was less a grand epic and more a short story, a brief, green interlude bookended by a long, stubborn winter and a persistent, nippy spring. We were left to polish our unused five-irons and dream of next year, already anticipating a longer, drier redemption season.

I guess you could say, in this now quiet off-season of golf, my golf season’s chronicle reads much like the solemn reason for this holiday season: a narrative of sacrifice, fleeting glory, and the enduring promise of redemption.

My season began with the innocent optimism of Advent, the crisp air holding a promise of perfect lies and low scores. Yet, the narrative quickly shifted. Like the trials in the wilderness, I faced barren fairways and the agony of the rough. Each hooked drive into the water hazard felt like a heavy cross to bear, a sacrifice of strokes offered up to the unforgiving greens. The immaculate back-nine I dreamed of was a miracle deferred, a testament to faith rather than execution.

But the essence of the story isn’t the suffering; it’s the hope that endures.

The occasional, perfect birdie putt was my resurrection moment, a brief, divine intervention proving salvation was possible. This annual cycle of struggle and fleeting triumph mirrors the core of the season’s reason: the belief in renewal and the promise that after the darkness, the light will return.

The word season implies that it is a period of time that will pass.  When I am in a tough season, it’s my faith that reminds me that it won’t last forever.  Seasons are for a reason. In them I sink my roots deep into the soil of faith, spread wide the branches of trust, sprout new growth where there was none before, and…rest….to catch my breath before the new season begins.

For just as Christmas promises new life and the forgiveness of sins, every winter promises a spring when the tees will be set again, and the scorecard will finally be wiped clean.

My Reds From The Reds: Jesus is the Reason for the Season

Fairways and Greens – We are 18 Holes and Counting.   

Written by Kathy Festa