The sacred of winter.

I woke up this September morning to snow not only blanketing our green lawn, but also dancing through the air like it just didn’t care.

It needs to be said here that September is much too soon for snow to be falling.

Now that I’ve gotten that classic Albertan statement out of the way, I was reminded once again this morning as I was the other few it has snowed of the sacredness of winter.

For me the first couple of months of winter carry such a wonderment. The atmosphere is thick with cozy thoughts and the overall desire to cuddle up by a fireplace with a book and a cup of tea. For me, cold cloudy days are like a hug to my heart. Being the blanket fanatic that I am, not to mention socks (I love cozy socks, almost too much), I get excited when the temperature drops.

With everything that has happened over the last few months of my life, this remembrance of winter has taken it’s breath straight to my heart.

I feel it deeply.

For as beautiful as winter can be, there is also a negative connotation towards it when we talk in terms of seasons of life.

I’ve been in winter for what seems like a long time. For me it goes beyond even losing my brother to cancer. It starts with a girl in high school who feels depressed but doesn’t want to admit it to anyone as it seems like complete failure. It stretches on beyond high school and follows her into college. It’s years of emotional break downs.

That girl is me, obviously. And depression has been nearly 10 years of my life, with its ups and downs and inside outs.

So fast forward to now. After losing Mikael, grief felt very familiar. It carried odes of depression with slight notes of anxiety. And like every time these feelings have dominated my life, I held a bit of denial in my heart taking it to only be grief when instead it was grief and depression mixed together in a layered cake of total misery.

I could go on about this for a while, but the condensed story for times sake is that I really did come to the end of myself. My head was spinning with those oh familiar thoughts of ending my life and it was terrifying. If I’m being totally honest I was so beyond terrified because I saw no way out this time.

Yet God. Honestly, I know it seems cliche sometimes but I can only use Him to explain how I am now sitting here writing this to you now. I took a month off of work and did a lot of work in my heart. But the biggest and most impactful thing I did was tell people. After years of hiding depression and suicidal thoughts I started telling people, and not just the few people closest in my safety circle.

And here I am. I honestly shake my head in pure amazement as I reflect on the last few months in specific. God is so beyond faithful and amazing. There are definitely days where fear kicks in for a moment and that old familiar feeling of stuck takes it’s toll.

This is when I take a breath, turn to my Father in heaven and He simply just reminds me of how far I’ve come. Not only that, but I am a part of a church start up that has dusted off dreams in my heart that were hiding behind layers and layers of feeling like I had failed and would never overcome.

Let’s go back to winter as I had written it at the beginning. Through this story of grief and depression the most important thing I have done is not denied these feelings. (Which may I remind you took my nearly 10 years to actually accomplish). I think for all of us, as soon as we deny our emotions winter turns into a bleak, blistery storm of isolation and desolation. Denial is what takes us away from our true selves, as God created us, full of emotions. Some more than others.

Yet time and time again, especially these last few weeks as my heart has grown in anticipation for my churches launch, there’s a huge part that gets overwhelmed with grief because how I wish I could tell Mikael all about this.

So reaching within, finding that place for just the Lord and I, all that I feel and all that I have gone through feel totally and completely acknowledged. And all of the sudden, what normally would have overwhelmed me now takes on a new meaning.

It’s the beauty of depth. It’s the gift of great comfort that can only happen when grieving. Just as the snow currently falling offers that feeling of cozy to my heart, I also have taken this and applied it to the literal season of my soul.

I would do anything to change how my February went. If there was some sort of business of trade with the Lord, I would have done it as much as needed to have my brother still here with us. But it just doesn’t work that way.

It’s in these last few months where I’ve discovered that in true acceptance of ourselves as God sees us shame begins to vanish. Because denial is a form of shame. It’s the thought process of, if I just hide this from everyone else they won’t have to know how broken and disabled I am.

Not only that, but denying my grieving process only makes it harder.

We are the curators of our hearts, our feelings and emotions. It is not others who cause us to feel and react. That is our response based on how we are doing emotionally and, well, just in general. And being curators we also have to respect ourselves.

And so this morning as tears pooled in my eyes as I got ready for the day, instead of being frustrated at myself I took it as a reminder to turn to Jesus and go, “I really need you today.” Because if I had let my emotions win I would still be in bed, wishing myself ill to take the day off work.

So from my heart to yours, here is to finding the beauty of winter. Here is to allowing our hearts to be comforted by the Great Comforter knowing that these hardships are only deepening our human experience.

Here is to the sacred of winter, because just look outside, it is so incredibly beautiful.

Then, by constantly using your faith, the life of Christ will be released deep inside you, and the resting place of his love will become the very source and root of your life. Ephesians 3:17