Winter of the Soul and the Hope of Spring
“A man is lying on a bed in a small room in the dark.
Weary and afraid, he prays for courage to sleep, to wake and work again; he doubts that waking when he wakes will recompense his sleep.
His prayers lean upward on the dark and fall like flares from a catastrophe.
He is a man breathing the fear of hopeless prayer, prayed in hope. He breathes the prayer of his fear that gives a light by which he sees only himself lying in the dark, a low mound asking almost nothing at all.
And then, long yet before dawn, comes what he had not thought: love that causes him to stir like the dead in the grave, being remembered - his own love or Heaven's, he does not know.
But now it is all around him; it comes down upon him like a summer rain falling slowly, quietly in the dark.”
- Wendell Berry
It finally snowed this weekend. Last weekend we were “supposed to get 11 inches” so we stocked up on groceries, brought in extra firewood, and hoped… to no avail. We saw a few magical flurries, but the rain had taken them away by morning. It was the same story leading up to this weekend. Some predicted 2-4 inches, others said it could be significantly more. I was tempted toward an “I’ll believe it when I see it” attitude, but that’s no fun for the kids. So I stocked up on groceries, had the kids bring in more firewood, and we hoped. This time we got maybe 2 inches and thirty mile per hour winds, but we didn’t let that steal our stoke. After weeks of the bitter cold biting our noses, we were ready to see some beauty along with it.
The bitterness of winter can have a way of pointing out areas of winter in our hearts. . . the places we feel a lack of hope, bitter cold, and a tendency towards despair. It’s much harder to have hope of warmer days when it’s been days, weeks, and months of the cold. It’s also hard to have hope of peace, joy, and clear revelations from God when he feels quiet and inspiration is lacking. This “winter of the soul” can have many expressions… maybe it’s a clear loss of a dream or of a loved one, maybe a slow unraveling of faith, a pang of disillusionment from all that’s going on in the world. Or perhaps it’s just the body’s response to the coldest, darkest months of the year.
What do we do during winter, when all feels dark and cold? Move to Florida? I will mention that our family goes to Costa Rica every March as our transition out of winter and into spring. We have learned to view our year in terms of our own unique seasons that have a different rhythm for each one. January and February are our slowest months of the year when we intentionally have less commitments and spend a lot of weekends by the fire. But often times, the stillness of winter can still feel long, cold, and purposeless.
In my last post, New Year, Still Winter, I talked about winter being a time to hunker down, to be still, slow down, and rest. It is a time to reflect and remember and rest assured that we have a faithful God who never hides. Here, I’d like to offer some ways to navigate this season, especially when winter begins to claim our souls. Just as a farmer has certain rhythms according to the season, we can too. We are simply not made to go at the same pace and do the same exact thing every day of every month all year long. A farmer knows winter is a time to rest, feast on what has been stored up from the last harvest, take account of the previous year, and prepare for the next one. There is an active surrender and participation in the rhythms of the seasons.
I’ll simplify these as: remembering, returning, receiving, and realigning.
First, remembering… We do not start the year as a blank slate. Just because it’s January 1st doesn’t mean we’re meant to be ready to take the year by the horns. God has been actively working in our lives all throughout the past year and the one before that. At the start of a new year, it’s important to take time to reflect and remember all that He has been doing. What are some prayers that were answered and what are some that remain unanswered. I am a big journaler, and find it extremely useful to go back and look at old journals from the previous year each January (and at other points in the year as well). It’s amazing how much I forget. This past year, the same ‘ole fear and guilt trap was rearing it’s head in different areas of my life… our annual moves to Hatteras and back had me questioning once again my identity and who my friends are. It tested my desire to feel rooted and secure. Most friends my age are becoming more and more established in their homes, educational choices, and communities, while we still pack up and leave every May to go live with a bunch of teenagers. But when I pause and remember all the ways God met me in those places over this past year, I can see through the lens of His goodness and provision. I remember all the ways He continued to make us more rooted and established in our yearly rhythms of living in two places, homeschooling, and learning how to partner in our marriage and ministry. I can see the difficulties my kids face living in two different places, but also how it is forming them into resilient, adventurous people who get to experience community and beauty. (Having to share one bedroom every year for five months has also shaped them.) It makes me tear up to think about how much each of them grew and thrived in both places this past year. Stopping to remember and reflect trains our eyes to see the good, and provides hopeful vision for what He wants to continue to do. We can do this as a practice in new seasons or as many times as we need to during the day. I love this excerpt from one of my favorite stories about a girl named “Much Afraid.”
“Suddenly she remembered, with a thrill of wonder and delight, that the seed of Love had been planted in her heart. As she thought of it, the same almost intolerable sweetness stole over her, the bittersweet, indefinable but wholly delightful ecstasy of a new happiness.” - Hinds Feet on High Places
When fear and lies encroached upon her mind, she needed to stop and remember what the Good Shepherd had told her in order to have courage to continue her journey.
Secondly, returning… returning to what we know is true and good and beautiful. Returning to the arms and heart of the Father who is not lacking or withholding, but has the bigger picture of redemption in view. What are the lies that the winter is speaking? I read Sally Lloyd Jones’ beautiful book to my son last night about a bunny born in spring who had never seen winter. The leaves started to fall, the ground got cold and cracked, and all the creatures hid. He thought the world was dying. But the owls cried out “Not truuuue! Not truuuue!” The earth was not dying, it was resting. Winter is the perfect time to return to the One who can keep us safe and warm even in the coldest, darkest season. We can rest in His love and be renewed by it. It takes intentionality in our time and our thoughts to become rooted in this realty. Remembering involves our minds, but returning also involves our hearts. We may need to return to the truth several times a day. . . calling out the lies and allowing the hope of what is true to fill our minds and hearts once more.
Thirdly, receiving… When we call out the lies of winter and return to the truth, there is so much we can receive from God. We need not muster up our own hope. Like the Wendell Berry poem, the man prayed with a mustard seed of hope in the night, only to experience a settling of love come over him as he slept.
“love that causes him to stir like the dead in the grave, being remembered - his own love or Heaven's, he does not know. But now it is all around him; it comes down upon him like a summer rain falling slowly, quietly in the dark.”
The deepest longings of our soul must be received by his grace, not attained by our own efforts. God can take the smallest amount of hope and answer us with His abundant love. But we cannot receive from Him if we are not looking to Him. We must turn our attention toward him whether we feel like it or not. This may look like a feeble prayer in the middle of the night, but we can take heart in the Psalmist’s words:
“Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” - Psalm 34:5
When we look to him, we truly can find deep rest for our souls. Our faces become radiant because they are reflections of his delight over us… and that delight anchors something deep within us.
Lastly, realigning. We often want to skip right to this part with all of our goals and strategies to better ourselves when we feel “out of whack.” We want that singular chiropractic visit that will realign everything that feels off so that all the parts function properly. . . and we want to do it ourselves. The obvious snare in this strategy is that one cannot align one’s own spine. We can’t see it or reach it. We need the hands of a skilled healer who knows the innerworkings of the human body. Our job is to go to the one who can heal and lie down.
When we feel “out of whack” in our relationship with God or in general, it can be tempting to think we need a full blank slate. It’s very tempting to want to “rewrite” our stories. There’s a lot of therapeutic talk out there regarding being the author of our own lives, being true to our selves, and having all the answers within ourselves. “All we need is the courage to trust ourselves,” they say. It sounds nice for a second, but it’s the chiropractor image… we can’t truly align ourselves without the skilled hands and vision of another. We can try, but this is not God’s design.
I was just telling someone recently that we can have a list of all our boxes that we want checked for our lives, and they might be very good boxes. But our vision and view of our desires is limited and incredibly narrow compared to what God desires for us. His vision is past, present, future and His heart for us is abundance. He knit us together in our mother’s wombs and calls us “very good.” He made us with good desires and loves hearing our hopes and dreams. God is not a withholding parent who says, “Ha, I told you so” when we fail, but an infinitely good Father who is gracious enough not to let our own plans succeed if they bring us away from him. However, if we do not believe God is good and that He is always working for our good, there lies the breakdown.
It is difficult to remember his goodness in all seasons. I sometimes hit moments in my homeschooling when all my fears of not doing enough and not giving our kids what they need flare up, and I question everything. It happened just yesterday actually. I went to my room and texted Ross some variation of “I just can’t do this anymore. . . constantly feel like I’m failing… no one listens to me…” etc, etc. Then two seconds later, (literally) I received a text from a friend inviting me to go on a trip for homeschool mothers this spring. I later looked back at the informational email about this particular trip. It wisely spoke of not needing to go on a trip to escape our lives, but to remember them. It was a reminder to remember… that God has called and equipped me for specific purposes… that He has always provided just what I need, and I am not meant to go at it alone. With God and others, hard seasons become opportunities for deeper trust and growth… to experience the deeper joy that is not absent of pain, but found in aligning ourselves with Christ and finding rest in him at all times. True alignment comes through surrender and trust, especially during difficult times.
As much as we want to escape what feels hard or out of whack, it’s the dance of remembering, returning, and receiving from God that realigns with our deepest worth and purposes. The more we practice it, the more natural it becomes. We dance without thinking, because it has become a natural rhythm.
An image in my mind that God keeps pointing me back to lately is the image of a little girl lying down, curled up and just enjoying being loved. My youngest son has been asking me to read him old children’s books before bed that quite noticeably had the same theme night after night. Dead trees, winter, and creatures finding safety in their cute little burrows below the layers of dirt and snow. There was one in particular about a girl imagining herself as a chipmunk and there was the exact image I had been given for days… she was curled up, safe and warm in her burrow, in the dead of winter while storms howled above her. No striving, no worrying, no fixing oneself. Winter is the time for lying down and having a good rest. I think this is what alignment can look like… like lying down.
When we truly know that we are not only loved but delighted in by our Heavenly Father, we can rest in confidence and rise up secure. When trials come our way, we are not thrown off or frightened. Then, as we get older, something magical happens. . . the trials of life don’t make us hard, but soften us… we become more naturally attuned to the Father’s heart and purposes for our lives. We walk freely and lightly through all seasons, and when spring comes, we confidently know our place on the earth.
I have friends who have gone through many trials in life, deep wounds that leave deep scars. Their suffering has been seasoned with a kind of hope that most people don’t understand or experience. They don’t mourn in the same way the world mourns. They don’t allow bitterness to take root. They wrestle with God, surely, but their wrestling has brought them nearer to his heart. There is something noticeable and palpable in their connection to the Spirit and their intimacy with Jesus. This doesn’t mean they don’t struggle or experience intense pain … but the intensity of their pain is matched with an intensity of closeness to their Heavenly Father. No one would choose to have one foot in heaven and one foot on earth because a loved one is in heaven, but there is also a strange sweetness that can accompany the most bitter grief: heaven is always in view. They live every day with hope.
On the other hand, some who experience tragedy don’t seem to have the endurance to keep on wrestling with God. They turn away, and the bitterness is all they taste. They cannot imagine a deeper goodness that could ever redeem their loss. In this view, God is a withholding father or a bad genie. All of us have been tempted to feel this way to some degree, or else will. That’s why it’s so important to learn the dance of trust, to learn to see through the lens of hope.
It’s okay to be offended by sin and death. God is too. But Lord, keep us from being offended by you. It’s okay not to enjoy the cold, harsh season of winter. But Lord, help us to see the beauty in the stillness and sting of this time of year. You are the only one who can take what is truly dead and make it into something beautiful, even more beautiful than if winter had never come.
So take heart, spring is coming.
"Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again." — Mr. Beaver The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
scenes from this winter