Winter is a season of waiting and it can be one of the hardest seasons to endure. When we experience a personal season of winter in our lives, the frozen and apparently barren landscape we find ourselves in leaves us hoping the relief of spring will come quickly. The repetition of the seasons surely teaches us that spring always comes, despite how foreboding the winter may seem. Yet however sure we are that winter will end, the wait can seem endless and it is easy to lose hope as we are left languishing in the cold. Although things look bleak, every season has its purpose and instead of just looking beyond winter toward spring, we can discover that winter can be a valuable period in our lives. 

Winter is an essential season in the life of a tree, it is a pause between all that was and all that will be. Winter is the in-between season – all the old autumn leaves have fallen to the ground but the new growth of spring is still yet to come. The trees laying down of their leaves has a purpose in the cycle of their lives, it’s a time for them to rest and get ready for what is to come, they have shed the old in preparation for the new.  But the new does not come straight away, the trees pause and rest during the cold, bitter months where it it toughest to survive. Although a tree in winter can look desolate from an outside perspective, a lot of what is happening is unseen, things aren’t necessarily desolate, just hidden. Beneath the surface there is growth, renewal, refreshing and preparation for all that is to come. Sometimes we need to experience a season of winter in our own lives as, like the trees, we also need time to rest and recuperate in the waiting. As the leaves on the trees fall to the ground for a season, we for seasons also have to lay things down and allow ourselves to slow down. As we slow down and take time to rest we can gain a different perspective as we allow ourselves time to just be. Winter is a season of being, rather than doing. Winter is not a busy but a quiet season, it’s not a time for planting or harvesting and the focus is not on what we are ‘producing’ with our lives, but it is an opportunity to cultivate life on the inside and prepare for what is to come.

Winter seasons can be a choice or they can be forced upon us. Often we won’t have to lay everything down at once, just certain areas of our lives, although that has certainly not been my experience. Winter’s fierce tempest struck my physical health with a shattering blow and I had to let the remaining fragments of my life hit the ground. My only option was to rest almost permanently as my body objected to any kind of output. I could no longer freely work, socialise or engage in ‘normal’ life. Life as I knew it had come to a grinding halt. Even though this physical rest had been forced upon me, I soon realised I was not really at rest as there was no rest within me. My thoughts still raced although my body could not, I felt on edge and over-thought every tiny thing and seemed to have no control over what went through my mind. I also felt deeply weary on the inside – worn down by the struggle of life. I desperately required refreshing internally as well as externally, it wasn‘t just my body that needing healing, but my soul too. My soul needed to remember how to rest and simply be and however harsh this winter season felt, it did provide an opportunity to do just that.

(Part Two to follow soon…)