What Winter Brings
One of my least favorite things about Florida is that this state doesn’t experience a true autumn. I’ve never been to New England, so I can’t say that I have ever experienced a true autumn either, but growing up near the border of Tennessee in north Alabama, where the foothills of the Appalachia begin trailing off, I have seen my fair share of beautiful fall foliage.
Maybe it’s the crisp air or the permission to finally wear flannels and sweaters, or maybe it’s the creeping approach of “spooky season” (I am an unashamed Halloween enthusiast), autumn is my favorite time of year. I don’t like to be too hot or too cold, so the extreme poles of summer and winter do not appeal to me. And spring is filled with far too much sneezing. But autumn? She is sheer perfection.
Verdant leaves make their annual costume change to shimmering gold, vibrant orange, and deep red and I am left in awe every time. Before living in Florida, I worked at a small college in Montgomery, Alabama. Inside the historic main building, my second-floor office hosted an entire wall of gothic windows. My attention constantly drawn outward to the library and her temporary residents, I monitored their coming and going with quick gaits, juggling armfuls of books, or hunched over with heavy backpacks. These poor souls likely finishing a last-minute paper or cramming for an exam.
On the lawn next to the library exists arguably one of the most beautiful trees I have ever seen. I don’t even know what kind of tree it is, but its billowing branches stretched high and wide, an expansive orb of leaf and wood. It is a perfectly fine tree during spring and summer, but in fall it becomes magical. For roughly one or two weeks, the green hues would turn canary yellow, almost overnight. Its color so bright and striking, it seemed ablaze. Every year I would watch for it to change, to ignite. And every year the transition was just as mesmerizing as the one before.
The autumns in Florida have not been quite as magical. Most trees stay green year round, or they turn a ruddy brown before quickly falling to the earth. Winter is far more captivating in Florida. Cool days where you can still be outside and experience the gifts of nature this wild environment offers without constantly reaching for a kleenex in the spring or melting into a puddle in summer. But fall… well, it falls short.
A thought struck me last October as I grieved the beauty and awe of autumn: the magic of trees changing colors, what I love and look forward to, is the leaves’ process of dying, of letting go, of making winter preparations. The tree sheds its leaves to save resources through the cold months, to endure the harsh winds and dropping temperatures. How often do we embrace the end of something with such awe and call it beautiful?
I’ve already expressed my gratitude for Florida winters. I am not built for deep cold. I once attended a conference in Indianapolis during a January “polar vortex”, where the windchill was 15-20 degrees below zero. Walking from the conference center across the street to our hotel felt like it would quite assuredly be the death of me. Each gust of wind was like a barrage of tiny knives slicing at my face. Three days in the frigid air was enough; I have never been so grateful to return to the south.
We moved to Florida in 2020 and that fall was an incredibly difficult season. Covid-19 was very much still a threat, even in Florida. We both started new jobs and navigating new forms of ministry (during a time of significant church decline and not being able to meet in person). I went from directing an annual youth ministry academy for high school and college students to serving as a care minister in a predominantly older local church. My wife went from serving two small, rural churches and leading a non-profit around community transformation to planting a new church. We left our community and moved to a place where we knew no one. Our dog, who hates storms, had to acclimate to a new house amidst hurricane season and literally started eating door frames and clawing up carpet. Change is hard and challenges abound.
My mental health was the biggest hurdle in that first year. I experienced a lot of transitional grief that fueled a prolonged season of depression. I had suffered from depressive episodes sporadically before, but only for a day or two. This round took months. Getting out of bed was an arduous task every single morning. When I did finally slog out of bed, the rest of the day felt like I was moving through jello, each movement of my body taxing and exhausting. I felt worthless, alone, and could not see any light at the end of the tunnel that things would ever get better.
I quickly found a new therapist and shortly after started anti-depressants. I wish I could say things got immediately better. But that medication was not the best fit for me. So after a while, when I felt minimal improvement, I weaned off. To no surprise, the depression returned. It has taken three years, consistent professional therapy, meeting with a psychologist to find what works, and adjusting to a new medication but I finally feel like myself again.
Even though Florida rarely hosts cold temperatures, these three years felt like a prolonged winter. In her book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May writes about this very real pain and hollowness amidst the challenging seasons in our lives. For May, wintering is
a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness or a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. Some wintering creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence. Some are appallingly sudden, like discovering one day that your skills are considered obsolete, the company you worked for has gone bankrupt, or your partner is in love with someone new. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful.”
Now that it finally feels like spring is blooming within me, I wish desperately that I had found Wintering sooner. Three years sooner. But all the same I am grateful to have May’s wisdom and permission to move into the winters of my life without shame and dread. To look at the things that end to see their beauty, grateful for their magic, to know that something else is happening underneath the surface. When the world is engulfed in fall foliage, I can now accept that this isn’t the end, that all the good things have come and gone. In winter, I can tend to the new life forming beneath, reorienting my life into something new.
This is the ever-evolving process of our spiritual lives. We might call this wintering a “dark night of the soul”, when the winds are harsh, light is bleak, and the world seems void of color. Where is hope in the midst of such despair? If we can claim the truth of our wintering souls, may we find hope always ready to burst forth, bulbs of new life already on deck for what will come next. If you are in a season of wintering, physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually (or likely a little bit of it all), the grief is real and the pain is freezing. And you are not done. You need some rest, some intentional focus on healing, recovering, preparing. This is what winter brings: a chance to make ready for new hope.
May writes, “We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.” Give yourself time, especially in your winters. There is something new around the corner. Tend to your soul to preserve your energy and make room for new life to bloom.
You are growing. You are becoming. You are not done.
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To learn more about Katherine May, her book Wintering, and her other works, visit her website here.
