What if I’m Wrong?: Navigating the Waves of Fear and Failureਨਮੂਨਾ

What do we do with the silence of God? What do we do with winters? What do we do when comfort feels like a false memory? When hope feels like delusion?

First, we search the ground for footprints. And we realize we have been here before. I don’t know if that insight awakens something in you like it did for me. But I distinctly remember feeling comforted by it. Seeing who I was in the snow reminded me of where I’d been. Not only have we survived these elements before, but the hope is that we have developed tools within ourselves to navigate them better and better each time. Because suffering will always be back, laughter will always give way to silence. Seasons will always change.

What if instead of hunkering down and boarding your doors in winter, you learned how to walk in the cold? To take a deep breath of icy air and let it remind you that you’re alive? What if you looked at the snow and let yourself acknowledge that it holds specks of beauty? What if you simply let winter be a part of your season, leaning in to see what it has to teach you, what this cold can reveal about who you are? Scan the snow for footprints. Trust the guide to lead you, just like all the times before. God is always closer than we think.

Underneath all that snow, the seeds and gardens are buried. The beauty isn’t gone; sometimes it’s just covered up. It’s on pause. It’s sleeping. Nature, like all things, needs rest. In fact, sometimes the harsher the winter, the livelier the spring. The mysterious thing about snow is that it eventually becomes water. It melts and saturates the ground. There are flowers that couldn’t bloom if they hadn’t gone through winter. There are species that thaw, and their hearts just keep on beating. There are diseases that can’t be killed unless you freeze the ground they are hiding in.

So, what if you aren’t failing? Or drowning? Or losing? What if you are wintering? And what if you could remember that seasons always change?

PRAYER: Lord God, thank you that I am not alone in my winter season, that you are with me each moment, guiding and sustaining me toward spring, Amen.