Honest Trees of Winter

I love the changing seasons. It may be because I get bored easily but I like to think it is because I appreciate that most things in life have a beginning and an end. And then another beginning and another ending and so forth. We learn to be present in the season and not fear the winds of change that are blowing. There is an assurance that we will see it again. It will be different but the same in many ways. We will recognize it again when it comes – senses overwhelmed with the blinding sight of crystal snow, the smell of rain showers, the sound of leaves crunching beneath our feet, the feel of the crisp breeze winding it’s fingers through us and around us.
Each season must let go in order to make room for new beginnings. Things die in order to live. Death can look hopeless like the naked trees on a winter landscape. Author Jeffrey McDaniel wrote,

I realize there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting things go.

How honest, how vulnerable to go from the vibrant, adored colors of autumn to the stark naked skeletons of winter. By all appearances they are dead, disfigured and dried up tributes to the glory that once was.
But deep within this season of dying they are quietly gaining the strength they need to birth something new. Something beautiful. Something life-giving. They have more stories to tell. More fruit to bear. More seeds to share.
I love the changing seasons because they mirror life. Life is full of seasons; beginnings and endings. Some are welcomed; some are feared. I can’t have the spring if I don’t endure the winter. Weather seasons are easier because we have this assurance; this personal experience that tells us that the next season is coming. When you are in the winter of the soul it can feel like there will never be another spring. That hope is gone.
I believe the Creator paints a very different picture for us in the story of the seasons. It is in the letting go that the trees make way for the new. It is during the frozen months that the ground prepares for the thaw. It is during the dormant winter that God is hard at work underneath the surface preparing the way for a new spring.
If you are in a season of winter, you aren’t dead. This isn’t the end. It is just a part of the journey. A part of the journey where God can do some life-giving work beneath the surface in preparation for a new beginning. You have more stories to tell. More fruit to bear. More seeds to share.