I don’t think winter ever actually leaves my mind. When spring finally arives in May I thank God that winter is over. In July I tell the kids, “get outside, it’ll be winter before you know it and then you’ll wish you could be out in the warm, mosquitto infested outdoors.” In October I spend every last minute savoring the fresh cool air because I know I’ll be inside with the windows locked tight any day now. Living in the northern midwest, winter is a pretty big part of our lives.

I’ve spent years resenting it and years falling into a deep depression because of it. Thankfully, there is the anticipation of the holidays to get us through the first two months, but come the middle of January and I’m so done.

I’m trying, I really am. I’m trying to find joy in other things, trying to surpress my longing to be outside again. But still the depression runs deep. It’s interesting how the weather outside matches the weather of my soul. The winter of our hearts.

No one looks forward to those times, no one wants it. We pray the season passes quickly. Those days when we pray and the heavens seem clouded over. We wonder where the warm sunshine and happy feelings have gone. I used to panic when these days came. “What’s wrong with me? Why am I such a bad Christian that this keeps happening to me? Shouldn’t I be always aware of God’s love and always feel His joy?” The years come and they go and thank God that with each year added also comes a tiny bit more understanding.

You see, when I dreaded the thought of winter, all I could think of was a dead stillness, a season when time seemed to stand still, frozen under ice and -20 temperatures. It never occured to me that while everything on the outside appeared dead, the world underneath the snow was ever growing. I never understood that if we didn’t have winter, the apple trees would never bloom. If there isn’t death, there isn’t life.

We all have this need, a time for rest. A time when our fruit is harvested and our leaves wither and die, and for a time we are still with no sign of life. A time when we’re not in the spot light, a time for deeper things to happen that can only happen in the quiet despair of winter.

For every winter we endure there is new life born. Every time the maple trees drop their golden leaves they grow new ones. Every spring their roots grow deeper and their trunk stretches towards the heavens taller and stronger than ever. Every time we feel a deadness in our hearts it’s the hint that something new is about to grow. Instead of resisting the stillness we can fall in to God’s grace and trust that we’ll come out on the other side. The coldness will thaw and the warm sun will shine on our faces again and we’ll stand taller and stronger than ever, with our roots deeper in God’s love.

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6