Winter

This long dark season
of everything
stripped
to nothing
began so sudden,
overnight,
with the gust of
one phone call,
then never left.
The only miracle here
is waiting
to see
how much night a day
can hold
and still be called
day.
-M.Buchanan

My winter of the soul began a while ago. There have been losses that have taken a toll, the loss of my dad - that brought with it a loss of greater significance than I realized, a lawsuit that took more out of us than we knew, and other losses, more recent and raw that I cannot write about because the wounds are too fresh. I have struggled to write during this season of my heart. I finally gave up altogether. I have posted, only to turn around and remove posts. It is difficult to write in the winter of one's heart. I have been overwhelmed with what a faithless time this seems to be. How Ecclesiastes and Psalm 88 are the words my soul recognizes best, and Jeremiah and the Sons of Korah are my close friends.

I am just beginning to see my winter differently. Maybe because I'm not as afraid of it, as I once was. It still has the power to bring me to my knees but it is here and has taken up residence. I can no longer pretend otherwise. Winter has a way of shaming its residents.

Winter is a time of fruitlessness - or so I thought, until recently. I am learning (ever so slowly) that there are lessons learned in winter that only winter can teach. The landscape of winter is a harsh, wild and raw kind of a thing - it is not dispassionate.

It is desperate.

It is this desperation that gives me hope.

"If some king of the earth have so large an extent of Dominion, in North and South, as that he hath Winter and Summer together in his Dominions, so large an extent East and West, as he hath day and night together in his Dominions, much more has God....He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; He can bring thy Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of spring, but as the Sun at noon... All times are His seasons."
From Sermon by John Donne 1624