When Life Is Winter

A reflection on 'Navigating the Seasons of Life'

By Nicole Doyley

In the Northeast, early November is a conflicted time of year. Fall colors still brighten the landscape, supermarkets display everything Thanksgiving, and we start to make plans to see family and friends. Then there is of course, just under the surface, the excitement of Christmas—especially if we have kids. They revise Christmas lists again and again and ask when we’re getting the tree. We look forward to decorating our homes with warm lights and deep colors. 

Yet there is also mounting dread. It’s cold in the North in the winter and it’s dark. Soon the leaves and the beauty will be gone. Cold, bleak, and gray: it will be too cold to bike ride, but there’s no snow yet to enjoy. Kids will be inside more, inflicting all that boundless energy on tired houses, and dark afternoons will mean seeing neighbors less as we all begin to settle in for the long hibernation. 

You don’t see a lot of life in the winter: no fruit and no flowers. Birds sing less and animals emerge only long enough to get more food. Everything is in survival mode. This is a picture of what we all go through at one time or another in our lives. All we can do is survive and there’s nothing particularly beautiful to behold. 

Whether you live in the North or in the tropics, everyone at some time will endure a winter season of the soul. Winter comes when you experience great loss: the death of someone dear, a major medical battle, or the demise of a marriage. It comes with disappointment: you’ve celebrated yet another birthday and you’re still single or still childless; your adult children are still prodigal or you’re still unemployed. You are reeling under a heavy burden and every day it takes extraordinary energy just to get out of bed. A person has died, a dream has died, or a relationship has died, and right now, you are just trying to live. 

I remember holding the hands of a woman who had lost her son. I couldn’t imagine her grief; as the mother of sons, I didn’t want to imagine her grief. She had prayed and prayed and prayed for his healing, and it never came—this side of heaven anyway. Her heart was broken in two and it always will be, to some extent. The loss of someone dear brings perhaps the darkest, coldest winter of the soul, and you feel like you will never experience the sun’s warmth again. 

I listened as another woman spoke of her husband’s betrayal. He left her, seeking pleasure in the arms of someone else younger, prettier, newer. How do you bounce back from such trauma? 

One thing is always true of the winter season: It feels like it will last forever and you will never be warm again. 

A winter season of the soul also comes when life is good but overwhelming: You’re drowning in your job or in the reality of a newborn, sleep deprivation and loss of personal freedom. Your house is a mess, your skills untapped, and your marriage neglected. To make matters worse, if you had a free morning, you’d choose sleep over anything else. 

For whatever reason you endure a winter, you will face a crossroads, a choice: Will you love God and cling to Him, even though you hate where you are, or will you turn your back on Him and forsake Him, convinced that He isn’t good after all? 

Option One at this crossroads is that you choose to move forward, straight ahead. You don’t understand why this is happening, but you choose to lay aside your need to understand and worship Him anyway. You yield. You submit. You bow. And you cling to God, though perhaps through bitter tears, hoping against hope that He will bring good, even out of this. 

We see this choice in Habakkuk, when the prophet stays the course and states with courage, 

“Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail, And the fields yield no food; 

Though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls—
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17-18, NLT).

Are you able to say that? Though this disease wins, though I never see my children return to God, though my husband never comes back to me, though I remain single, though I never bear biological children... YET I will rejoice in the Lord. 

Read the chorus from the song, Even if, by MercyMe: 

I know You’re able and I know You can/ Save through the fire with Your mighty hand/ But even if You don’t/ My hope is You alone.¹

Even if you don’t, my hope is You alone. The trajectory of your life has everything to do with your ability to say that in this winter season of your soul. 

If we cling to Him and let go of our need to know why and our sense of what we deserve, God will redeem this. God will bring forth beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3). I’ve seen Him do it, even when it seemed impossible. 

Don’t let self-pity sabotage the redemptive work of God. God is saying to you, Yield. Let go. Worship Me even now.

Here’s some good news: if you choose to cling to God, you will likely experience His presence in a special way during this time. During the winter, the liquid in maple trees turns sweet. We can tap these trees, collect the sap, and make maple syrup. Similarly, though the wind is howling, and the weight of the disappointment crushing, look for God to make something sweet even out of this. 

Nicole Doyley worked in church ministry for almost 25 years, authored three books and published numerous articles in diverse periodicals, including the Huffington Post and The Witness: a Black Christian Collective.  She hosts her own podcast (Let’s Talk: conversations on race), speaks in conferences, seminars and webinars and acts as a consultant to various organizations on the topics of diversity, racial sensitivity, and racial equity. Her book about raising mixed-race kids will release in Spring 2025. She lives with her husband and two sons in Rochester, NY.  Find her at nicoledoyley.com.

*Excerpted from When Life is Winter: Navigating the Seasons of Life, by Nicole Doyley. Available on Amazon.

*Photo by Nicole Joseph Pearson on Unsplash

1.  MercyMe. Lyrics to Even If. AZLyrics. https://www.azlyrics. com/lyrics/mercyme/evenif.html.

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