Thank you, Lorrie, for joining InScribe Writers Online on Guest Post Day.Winter arrived on a sunny May morning when my husband walked into the house at 11:00 am saying, “The unthinkable has happened. I’ve been fired.”
He worked as an executive in a Christian company and his firing was without cause, and utterly unexpected. At that moment, a chill began to settle around my heart which deepened as months of unemployment lengthened. Other events contributed to bewilderment that swirled like a blizzard around me: marriage problems within our extended family, a daughter’s infertility, a move when my husband found work after 10 months of looking, and a nephew’s fight with cancer that ended with his death at the age of 29.
All is not bleak in winter. Beauty comes, and joy –– the delight of welcoming a new son-in-law and our first grandchild. There is laughter and friendship. But in the quiet, when alone, winter settles deep into my bones with frigid intent.
What does a winter of the soul look like?
It is not depression. It is knowing, from years of faith, that God is present, yet feeling only his absence. Prayer seems futile, yet I pour out my heart in words, in tears, in writing, to a God whom I believe still cares for me although I no longer feel his love.
It is cynicism and judgment, an inability and unwillingness to trust others. It is a heart that aches for warmth, yet shuts itself behind doors of ice. It is hurt.
It is not lack of faith, or sin. It is a barren, windswept landscape of disorientation in which I long for direction. It is plodding, step by step, head down into the wind, without knowing my destination. It is clinging to promises of hope, and reading over and over God’s promise of never leaving me, all the while wondering how long this winter season will last.
It is bafflement. It is asking questions for which no answers come. It is an unfulfilled longing to trust God and to rest in his goodness. It is waiting.
It is an oddly comfortable cohabitation of faith and doubt in which I realize that God welcomes my questions and wants only me. What he will do with me, I do not know.
I write now from the end of winter. This long winter, over three years in duration, is losing its chilling grip. There is lightness in my being, and a warmth melting the clod of ice in my chest. I write now before winter ends because I do not want to forget. I want to mark this season and winter’s lessons. Compassion. Understanding. A gentling of my spirit. A hatred of lack of integrity and false living. A realization that hope is one of my most precious gifts from God. Knowing that one day winter will end and new life will emerge. My soul feels the unmistakeable warmth of God’s Spirit once again and I melt in gratitude.
© Lorrie Orr
Lorrie Orr writes to make sense of the constant stream of thoughts running rampant in her mind. Married to Tim, mother of 3 plus 3, Nana to two darling little girls. Blogs at Fabric Paper Thread.
