Wintering

I haven't wanted to write in a while. If I’m honest, the last few months have felt hard. They have felt more like survival - bunkering down and doing what absolutely has to get done, rather than being able to pull together any scraps of meaning. I’ve been rereading the book ‘Wintering’, which is helpful in these seasons of life that feel barren, and that can trick us into believing they are meaningless and empty.

For the first time in my life, I am trying medication to help me cope. Coping is a fair enough goal, but I’ve found myself wanting to go beyond this, to move quickly to that point where everything makes sense; to where I can see God in the situation and I can look back on the difficult season with a little more wisdom than I had before. I want to push through and push out - to transform my emotions and experiences into something more easily digestible, for myself and others. I don’t want to be ‘in the midst of’, I want to be ‘through’. And with dogged determination I will strain forwards till I reach that end point. As Katherine May (author of ‘Wintering’) puts it; ‘While we may no longer see depression as failure, we expect you to spin it into something meaningful pretty quick.’

Thankfully, there is another invitation that I am hearing in the midst of this darkness. This is an invitation to sit with the mess, the unexplained answers and the difficult feelings, and to allow them to be. To create room for what is real. To be kind to myself and to do the things that I know help - yes, but also to create room to live in this season without needing to change or escape it. Sometimes I think God is more ok with my mess than I am. Sometimes I think this is exactly the place that he is dwelling, and the place where I can meet him if I allow myself to linger. And it’s good news - I don’t need to fear the darkness. In all of our lives we will have periods of ‘winter’, times that feel painful or fallow or empty. But God is no less present in these times as in the high points. And, just maybe, there is a gift waiting for us in the stillness and mystery, if we learn to wait. I like this from Kathrine May; ‘If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt.’ 

I want to do everything good and healthy in order to try and feel better, but when I have done all of those things and I am still in the darkness, I want to learn to sit in what’s real. Not to need to turn it into a fridge magnet quote instantly, or have some cosmic explanation. I’m not sure what God is doing with me at the moment. I’m not always sure what I think. But I am learning bit by bit to make my peace with that. And to see the beauty that comes even in winter.