“…there is something sacred in the fall of snow… Blessings from the heavens, they sustain life. And if sometimes they create difficulties for humans, that’s not the fault of nature. The fault is in the nature of man. Humans…are far too focused on doing and not enough on being.”

William Kent Krueger, Fox Creek

I realize that the calendar says spring and most of the country is seeing spring but, until two days ago, I was still seeing winter. Big snow piles everywhere after a very long, very snowy winter.

To be honest, I’m still feeling a little winter too.

While Minnesota’s ridiculously long season of snow started with a bang (well, a blizzard) in December, my winter actually blew in the previous March. It began the morning I walked into my husband’s ICU room and learned he’d suffered a severe stroke after open-heart surgery.

Months later, on a glorious summer day, I ran into friends…and found myself barely able to tolerate talking with them. Anger at our situation overwhelmed me, frustration at them discussing things that seemed so unimportant in comparison. That was the day I realized I needed to pull away from others for a while.

My sister-in-law warned me not to isolate. But I had to isolate. I certainly was in no condition to be a good friend to someone else, and I had no energy at the end of the day to share what I lived through that day.

So, by time covid hit our house in November, I was used to isolating. It felt comfortable. And by the time I emerged from covid in December, true winter had fully covered our house.

Recently, as the calendar began to close in on spring, I found I needed just a little more time to feel winter. Just a little more focusing on “being.”

Time here, all but means nothing
Just shadows that move ‘cross the wall
They keep me company, but they don’t ask of me
They don’t say nothing at all

And I need just a little more silence
And I need just a little more time

Sarah McLachlan, “Time” from Afterglow

I knew I would be “doing” less after shoulder surgery in mid-February, giving me more time for “being.” Shortly before surgery, I saw a quote from a book by Katherine May called Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. Ah, now there was a book I needed to read while recovering!

“But if happiness is a skill, then sadness is, too. … As adults, we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. … It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can.”

Yes, wintering was what I had been doing, allowing myself to feel a sad winter season from one spring all the way to the next.

“Underneath this chaos and clutter lies a longing for more elemental things – love, beauty, comfort, a short spell of oblivion once in a while.”

“I love the inconvenience [of snow] the same way that I sneakingly love a bad cold: the irresistible disruption to mundane life, forcing you to stop for a while and step outside your normal habits.”

Longing for oblivion, disruption. Yes, that resonated. Not so much because life’s been mundane but more because it’s been anything but.

…do not grieve like [those] who have no hope.

1 THESSALONIANS 4:13

Yet wintering is not giving up. It’s not depression.

It’s a reset. A hard, complete reset. It’s a pause from life…that will restore life.

And sometimes that takes longer than a calendar winter. Sometimes it takes place outside of the calendar’s winter season completely. It’s feeling winter for as long as we need to, until one morning the sun shines and finally the deep winter snow begins to melt.