And Winter

I’m the one standing on tiptoe staring ahead into spring.

It’s been winter, and another winter season in more ways than one. It’s our first time living in a northern winter in 15 years. I’m tired of this season, tired of the cold, the dry, the hard, and my weariness is pricked by the forecast and life circumstances.

“Your life is going to be like a snow globe”, wise words from gentle friends warning of this next season we would enter. “Everything is going to be shaken up and your world turned upside down and it will take a while for the snow to settle. Wait for the snow to settle. Give it time.”

And they couldn’t have been more right, and the funny thing, it’s seemed like the snow globe keeps being shaken still, and how can the snow ever settle when the shaking never stops?

Our house, empty, years of renovating and beauty making, left. The worst and best memories housed here, and I walk through the stark home, echoes from empty, and echoes back images of trauma and images of rescue and how many times did I fall on these floors in anguish and desperate prayers? The same floors my boys bowed down on to surrender to Christ in salvation moments.

Babies miscarried here, and it’s like I’m leaving them.

How many pieces of bad news were heard here?

And there’s the spot we stood as a family on Zoom court and adopted our daughter.

Some of the best, some of the worst days here.

This house, this home, no longer ours. And moving pains.

We arrive into our new season, and the snow falls outside and in the snow globe of our hearts, and sickness and loneliness and new stressors shake us more.

Seasonal sadness hits me on a normal winter and this winter is far from normal and the depression tries to drown me. There’s so much to grieve, and then guilt comes in and tells me there’s so much to be thankful for. And here I am again wondering how to hold this tension of sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

I remember Ellis’ heaven day here, in this new space, this temporary rented space, and I reach back in time with my heart, and hands reached ahead with honor and sunflower petals tossed into the creek.

January, the month of loss as more is lost this January again, and now February and I’m tiptoe-postured counting down the last hours of this dark month and begging God for spring in many ways. And I know even now hope buds in our old backyard where the daffodils would pop up right at this desperate time, but I don’t see any daffodils here.

Jello.

It’s the image that comes to mind as the lyrics that always make me cry ring out: “Morning by morning new mercies I see.”

His faithfulness then, each wretched morning when I woke from barely sleeping again and remembered all the things again, and my blood sugar was shot and I slumped at the table to eat Jello.

Each morning beginning shaking and nauseous and panic-attacking and Jello helping settle the rough starts to each day.

Mercy.

The lyrics hit me in this worship service for the first time from another segment:

“Summer and winter and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.”

And winter. Winter, too? Can winter be a part of this great witnessing, great testifying of praise to His faithfulness?

Springtime, I see it; summer, no doubt. Fall even still illustrates clearly to me with its harvest.

But winter?

And then it hits me- especially winter.

Don’t the darkest seasons shine Him the brightest? And we rarely see it in it, rarely can tell when in the middle, but after- isn’t it clear? Don’t we look back on seasons and see His great faithfulness specifically in our winters?

Don’t the darkest seasons shine Him the brightest?

Can I trust that while I don’t see it now and don’t feel it now, it’s there- His faithfulness- can I have faith to believe it’s there?

And can I manage to not despise this winter and not to rush this winter but to embrace it with its dark and cold and hard and let Him work faithfully as He does so well?

I bend back down from being tiptoe, make a conscious effort to not despise this season, to receive it in faith instead, and though spring is sure to bloom soon outside I know my personal snow globe may very well keep shaking.

Can my heart posture tilt it’s chin up and feel the flakes and accept the turning and join winter in praise of His faithfulness?

I’m ready for this season in my life to end, for the snow to settle and melt and see new life blooming. But if I rush this winter I know better, I know there will be less blooms when the next season comes.

I keep both feet on the floor. Discipline myself to stay planted here so I can bloom there.

Allow myself to sing it: And winter.