Winter

Researchers have proved that November 1^st is the most depressing day of the year.

66% of the population feel depressed as they struggle: It’s cold, the days are darker, and you’re miserable because it’s the first day after you that beautiful night when you got an extra hour’s sleep.

Besides the excitement of wearing your cuddly seasonal coat for the first time, Christmas dinner and a debauched New Years Eve, there isn’t much to look forward to in Winter. By its very definition it is a dark, rainy, cold, bleak time where all you want to do is hide away under your duvet covers sipping hot chocolate and come up again in spring like a hibernating creature.

Life is winter.

Your excitement at moving into a new house is overshadowed by the fact that your husband is still working in your old city, and it will be a couple more weeks before you join him…

…Him?! A Husband?! I’m so far from a husband it’s ridiculous! If I have to smile fakely at one more Christmas princess themed wedding I might just scream...

Screaming kid, all through the night never stops, when will I get to sleep and return to a sense of normality?...

Normal. There is nothing normal about living in a different country to your friends and family. Nothing normal about feeling unsupported and confused and unloved…

Unloved. Cast off. Ditched. What kinda friend was she?!

She can’t be ill. Terminal? No. She had so much life. I’m not ready for her to

Curl

Up

And

Die.

That’s how we feel.

The problems trail behind us like a grocery list.

The pain we feel is as raw as the day we first got cut.

The people around you just don’t understand.

I hurt right now. So much and for so many reasons.

But I know you are hurting too.

And that makes it better.

Not in a morbid, “Ha ha, sucks to be be you” kinda way.

But in a, “This is who we are as humanity” kinda way.

Broken

Desperate people

Coping

Barely

Each day

With the trials that come along our way.

Sometimes we feel that we are the only one.

But we’re not.

We’re not so special that we have been isolated and set apart for all the worst things in the world to storm and rain over our heads.

Even though it feels like that.

I love winter for the sheer fact that despite the cold, snow and rain, I can put on my bright coloured sugar boots with leg warmers, a cosy hat and scarf, and go outside

And revel in it.

I turn the winter

Into my wonderland.

I don’t ignore the weather.

I find joy in it.

I find others who are inside, depressed by the darkened landscape of their lives,

And I invite them to come out and enjoy what they can.

We don’t ignore our problems.

We don’t forget them.

We just realize that there is more to our life than them.

Some of my problems will be better in a day.

Others will take weeks, months…maybe years.

But I have been promised by Father God that we can be sure that every detail in our lives of God is worked into something good.

Every detail.

Every tear.

Ever snowflake of winter.

Worked into something.

And that something will be good.

You can always find colour in winter. 

Photos courtesy of Paul Green, an AMAZING photographer!!