On Embracing the Winter and Wilderness
As we cross the threshold into a new year
This week between Christmas and the New Year is a bit of a vortex. I don’t quite know the science behind it, but that Christmas tree and those decorations that brought so much comfort and magic for the better part of thirty days all of a sudden look like chintzy clutter that must come down, or else I may lose my soul. I vowed I would keep my tree up a bit longer this year. I did. It came down on the twenty-seventh instead of the twenty-sixth. It’s cleansing resetting the home—at least it is for me.
I tend to feel the after-Christmas blues pretty acutely. I’ve never been one that can so quickly turn the page from Advent and childlike anticipation to how to tackle the coming year with gusto and domination. It’s still winter, and even though the calendar turns tomorrow into a brand new year, nature is informing us that our harshest days are still very much ahead. Winter, for me, feels like something to handle with care—both on the outside and on the inside. Everything around us is exposed and vulnerable. Much of the earth is dormant. False pretenses are gone, and it's a time to tuck away and maybe even simply survive. Life only makes sense to me in seasons, and right now, my soul is in line with a winter that has only just begun.
I wonder if some of you are like me right now, wondering what to do with a year that has perhaps just stacked heartache on top of the previous one. Here we sit on the eve of a new year with no real indication that this fog should be lifting anytime soon—or at the very least without a kind of effort you’re not sure you have to give. I don’t know many people in my direct sphere who are doing great right now, and I know many people who are just flat-out in the middle of very real suffering. There’s no fundamental good theology for suffering, sadly not even in most of our churches, certainly not in America. We are better at looking the other way, picking ourselves by the bootstraps and moving on. The problem is that winter will come again, and if we have no real sense of how to live through these stripping seasons, I think we put ourselves at risk of fully living through the rest. What we do when during these times, in the dead of winter, as the calendar is turning the page, I tend to believe builds are the very building blocks for lives lived fully and with integrity.
I have thought a lot about this past year and the days to come. It’s nearly guaranteed that no matter how we go into this year, it will hold many things: love, joy, peace, change, waiting, loss, grief, questions, grace, mercy, and hope, to name a few. But for those of you who, like me, may be wading in deeper waters, I always love what James has to say. “Consider it great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” (James 1:2-4)
As laborious as this year has felt, if it were up to me, I would have said that endurance had done its complete work a while ago. I have said many times throughout the past few months that with so much out of my control, there are few things within that I can control. To begin with, I can put one heavy clopping foot in front of the other, allowing endurance to do its very painful, often long-suffering kind of work. I yield to that because, at the end of the day, I want to be at least on the road to completion and lacking nothing, always.
Elisabeth Elliot says it this way: “God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus.” That’s a scary thought for me, knowing that I am a long way off from that, and that’s a goal none of us will ever obtain. She sees what James saw: that there is no easy way through this life, and we can only make it harder when we don’t yield to our winter seasons. Without embracing the winter, we will never be truly complete.
I woke somewhere near the middle of 2024 in the wilderness. Now, mind you, I can see more clearly now that I have been wading into this kind of region for a while, but there was a day when I was more or less jolted out of bed to find myself completely disoriented, eyes foggy, looking around to survey the land. I don’t know if you have ever been in shock, but getting your bearings is quite challenging. Shock is the first stage of grief, and it can be pretty helpful in the first few days, weeks, and months. It’s fascinating what your body can do to survive. Unfortunately, yes, the body keeps the score, and running on the fuel of cortisol eventually wears off. Your adrenals say no more, and your nervous system is left in a fragmented, dysregulated state. You’re left with a body that has taken a hit from the inside out, which feels a bit like going ten rounds or running a marathon or whatever metaphor you can dramatically insert to make the point. This is where most people quit. Or numb out. Or run the other way. I’ve done my fair share of all of those in the past. It has gotten me through the winter enough to survive, but no measure of avoidance, even if subconscious and out of survival, will make you complete. Winter eventually comes again. This is what James is getting at. It’s no joy to be held to the fire or put to the test, but it is necessary, good even.
As I write to you this morning, the sun is shining, and it’s warm enough to be on my favorite spot on my back porch on the 30th of December. The past four days, though, it has rained and rained and rained. I took advantage of the breaks and got outside, but there is something to the continual gray weather that breaks you down a little bit. I’m from Oregon, but not the part of the state where sunshine is only prevalent in the summer. I don’t know how those year-round gloomy weather people do it, but I digress. 2024 has been a year that I would have never written, never asked for, and frankly don’t wish to do again. Yet, I am possibly realistic to a fault and am staring down another year with blank pages of uncertainty that could continue to shatter the very foundations of life.
I spent a few days this week that was an introvert’s dream. Reading and writing and journaling to the soundtrack of rain is kind of dreamy. As I reflected, I surveyed my surroundings. I don’t live in the wilderness—I live in the south, where things are surprisingly still green. I’m not talking so much about what I can see but more about that metaphorical place I find myself—the landscape with me that we often call our soul. John Ortberg defines the soul as the life center of a person, integrating the mind, body, and will. His book, Soul Keeping, explores this thing we all have but often don’t fully understand or neglect. He says that an unhealthy soul is disorganized, disconnected, and disintegrated and that anxiety, depression, fear, and loneliness are symptoms of a soul that has lost touch with its source of life. As for me, in 2025, I commit to working towards an organized, integrated soul. For far too long, fear has been the voice that has been speaking the loudest.
Whenever I need answers, I search for the words of my favorite seer, Isaiah. I suppose the prophets bring me a healthy dose of hope and understanding that God operates outside our timelines. Two years ago, around the start of the new year, I was confident that I was led to Isaiah 43. “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:18-19 ) That year, I made it my mission to look for the new thing God was doing around me. My spirit became attuned to what was happening in my life and all around me. I could write a series of books about what I found and what has transpired in our lives since then, but that is another day.
As we come to the end of the year, I find myself in the wilderness, returning to the beautiful imagery of Isaiah. I don’t so much lament that I am here; it is my reality, and there is a level of acceptance that allows me to go on, but now more than ever, I need to be reminded of the promises kept in these barren places. If we back up a few chapters, we will find something I would eventually like a painting of. “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive. I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together, that they may see and know, may consider and understand together, that the hand of the Lord has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it.” (Isaiah 41:17-20)
That picture of various evergreen trees springing up in the wilderness is beautiful to me. Earlier this year, we traveled to Zimbabwe, and a portion of our trip was spent driving through the rural parts outside of Harare. I got to witness in person the beauty of Acacia trees sparsely sprung up in the middle of the savanna. We were there during an extended drought. It was so dry it felt like the earth was attempting to steal water from my very body. We were there for only a short time, but we had the chance to go on a one-day safari. The animals were a thing of beauty to witness, but for me, looking out over vast landscapes sparsely littered with these beautiful trees was what caught my eye. I often thought of how God uses trees in the Bible to symbolize life, strength, resilience, growth, and deep-rooted stability. Only the Lord could plant and sustain something like this in the desert. Only He can make rivers in the desert.
I went looking this week for promises kept in our winter seasons—in our times spent in the wilderness. What I didn’t know to ask for was to be reminded that I need not fear, for the same God that plants these trees in a barren land is the source of my strength, the keeper of my soul. Who am I if not guided by fear? That’s what I hope to find out in 2025. “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.” (Isaiah 41:13)
I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to thank each of you for reading my writing. In the coming year, I will make some changes around here; namely, I will write more often. I am offering a place for you to support my work through a paid subscription to my newsletter, and I will let you know what that will include in the coming days. Either way, hitting the subscribe button will significantly help as I look to continue on a long-standing book project. It goes against every fiber of my being to ask for your support, but the reality is that we live in a time when numbers do the talking. Now that this ick is out of the way, I say to you, may God be with you as we begin again.
I love when you write and share Julie. Always reading from here.