A Spiritual Season

"If some longing goes unmet, 

don't be astonished. 

We call that Life." 

-- Anna Freud 

Have you ever noticed how the earth slows, nature is subdued and all forms of life retreat as autumn turns to the blustery, frozen winter season? I'm sure you have. Unless you are a) highly unobservant or b) a hermit, I think it's safe to say that you are well aware of this time. It's cold. It's slippery. We have to arise hours earlier than our planned departures to defrost and scrape the layers of ice off of our cars. Sickness infiltrates campus and is evident in the rosy noses and sniffles everywhere. I long for a time when the sun is warm, and I can wear sandals again. Where life is abundant and everything is green.  This is the season where my soul withdraws from the desire to be awake, alert, and always social and suddenly I find myself at a local coffee shop desiring time spent away from people. What is it about this time, that reminds me of the congruence I feel between my soul's longing for spiritual revival and the earth's yearning for spring? Somewhere in between the freezing weather and frost bites, I've lost touch with the simple truths of the winter season and what makes this juncture of time worth musing about.

Any Midwesterner is likely to be able to describe the brutality of winters that we face.  It seems like winter goes on forever and like we never will see the sun and feel the warmth of its rays again.  For some reason, the movie "Thumbelina" comes to my head and a mental image of them singing "Once there was the sun, warm and bright and wonderful."  That's a bit depressing.  I think that's how I've viewed winter. A time of darkness where I often feel cold and uncomfortable. Where planting anything will just result in failure to bear any sort of fruit. My favorite season (autumn) has passed and it is a long wait until spring's arrival. But this isn't just about the weather.  I've noticed that my soul is residing in a spiritual season highly reflecting winter.  Especially with the recent coming and going of certain seasons of my life, and parts of myself I thought I was sure of withering, this transitioning stage of life has me feeling like the earth-- barren and longing for God's warmth and intimacy.

The onset of winter has caused me to reflect on this current season of my life. This fall, just as leaves fell to the ground, I was reminded of how my heightened expectations of myself and my actual reality 

led me to feel like I fell short in many areas of life. It's funny how one area of shortcoming can overshadow the rest of our lives and leaf us (pun intended) feeling like we already are in the dead of winter, and it's only fall.  In academics, athletics, friendships, future vocation plans and even my spiritual life I was faced with the harsh reality that longing for certain ideals can often be a path to self-destruction. As the season drew on, more and more of myself was being stripped away and here now, is my soul, feeling hypothermic and unfruitful in the dead of winter, yearning to be redressed with the hope of spring.

But friends, it can't always be spring or summer, we can't always be harvesting fruit, and existing during the day.  We need seasons of winter, we need time to plan our next harvest and we need time at night to rest, to sleep (the good Lord can really only help college students with that one).  If we always experienced the growth and spiritual highs of the seasons aside from winter, we would not get the dormancy and consolidation that winter provides. This winter season of my life is a time where I am reminded of my shortcomings and inherent limitations but also that God provides compensations for the darkness of my human condition. Yes, the leaves have fallen and the trees are naked, but that allows for more light to shine through the branches, right? Are you following? 

Our spiritual winters elicit in us a sense of hibernation, that our lives can't be a constant spiritual high. God doesn't just want us to know him when we feel we are in the spiritual summers or springs of our lives. It is in the dead of winter when I realize this hibernation of all these things that are good about myself brings forth what is good about God, his mercy and constant presence in a cold and dismal season. It's like he freezes the inner workings of my mind and spirit to draw me to a place where I can evaluate and contemplate who he is instead of how I need to be growing.  He is present. He is constant even as seasons of my life transition from times of abundant life, to times of desolation. I anticipate and yearn for a time when I will bear fruit, and my spiritual fervor can be restored.  However, that yearning is not unmet during the winter, just subdued for a while. 

O God, you are my God,

      earnestly I seek you;

my soul thirsts for you,

      my body longs for you,

in a dry and weary land

          where there is no water. 

                  -- Psalm 63:1

Winter is worth musing about because in the words of Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, it calls us to "relinquish our agendas and open new spaces in our lives for God to show up."  Winter is muse-able because even as we long for God, his grace covers us like blankets of pure white snow.  So I encourage you to spend winter musing, over God, over his promises and truth and the grace he gives that allows our souls to retreat and long for his mercy and faithfulness in our lives.