Photo by Lyubov Chigrinskaya on Unsplash

Years ago, I stood in a crocus field in Holland. Our bulb farmer friend showed us the heating pipes that ran under the acres of rows of dirt. These heaters boosted the soil temperature for crocuses to give them a jump start on their competitors.

But before that luxurious spring came winter. Our friend showed us the buildings with huge coolers that forced winter on the bulbs. He explained how essential it is that the crocus corms were kept at a specific cold for a specific length of time. Without this carefully- designed winter, the crocuses wouldn’t produce well later even in their deluxe spring bed heaters.

I often think about that compulsory winter for the wrinkled little bulbs, and I wonder about my seasons and my flourishing.

Right now, it’s winter above the equator and it’s a beautiful one. Every morning I thank God for warmth and light and health and quietness–gifts that many in the world don’t have. For months, I got to watch the black sky turn to periwinkle then I put on boots and many layers of clothes and walked to work in fluffy snow. It was like a storybook. Ok, sometimes now it’s slush, not snow, but still. This winter has treated us exceptionally well.

Some of the best moments were when I walked in falling snow. Or made a snow angel then stayed and watched downy flakes fall and fall on me. It was so quiet relaxing, I understood why one would want to curl up in a snowbank for a nap.

This winter kept on being beautiful. But winter isn’t always white and peaceful, either outside the house or inside the heart. Sometimes more accurate words for winter are

• bleak
• howling
• dark
• ghostly
• empty
• ugly
• parched
• barren

Winter can be a season in the calendar or of the soul. It is never warm breezes and pink blossoms. I see no beauty in gray, bare stalks and trees. I find no joy in husks of stems and leaves, mud, and thick clouds at high noon. Winter feels like wasted time, pointless, empty, and, worst of all, ugly.

I have found no fast cure, no quick ticket to a warm spring and billows of blossoms. Winter is a season, a rhythm that comes and goes without my permission. I can only control my response to it. So, after many years of resenting winter’s darkness, I’ve come to try to befriend its hostility.

I bought a long down-filled coat and ear muffs and when I wrap my scarf around my neck and face, the cold can hardly get me. I light candles and read and drink tea. Or host friends or bake bread to give away. Or go to bed early. Or play with watercolors or words.

It’s a mindset I learned from Wintering: the Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. She explained how Scandinavians in their long winters make the most of the season instead of fighting it. Since it’s going to be dark, they insist on cozy lights. Since it’s going to be cold, they wear warm layers and snow boots. That approach has changed my life in northwestern Pennsylvania where winter stays for six months.

In melodramatic moments, I say that we’re in the Arctic Circle and sometimes see penguins. My impatience comes from having lived in Ireland where daffodils bloomed in late January and now I have to wait until at least April. But I also experienced SAD there and those winters were dark and rainy and I wanted to run away to Spain or Italy every winter.

The good thing about seasons is that they don’t stay. And they are part of a life cycle. Winter is not empty time, but a space to go still, like a seed underground. Winter is the creator’s answer to the longing to bloom. Winter quiets the seed, nests it safe, protects it from death while it rests. The husk of the seed does die. Death is part of winter but it is for the purpose of life.

Stillness and quietness works for seeds and people and their fruitfulness.

Have you noticed it? The people you know who are most luminous now have known long, cold, brutal winter in previous seasons. They had no timeline, no calendar to know when spring was coming. They couldn’t see progress or change in that darkness, but underneath all the layers, even in the dark and cold, life hadn’t stopped. The roots hadn’t withered.

I don’t say that glibly. Spring is hard-won. Winter seasons are intensely difficult, demanding, distressing—how many other D words?—dangerous, depressing, debilitating, dark, depleting, deserted.

Being chirpy about winter isn’t helpful. But it helps me to name what is true. And it helps me to know, in a dark season of famine and barrenness, that it won’t always be this way, that spring comes eventually. At some point, I know, water will trickle again instead of freezing.

Let me tell you an unbelievable secret. It’s so astounding, I have to whisper it because it’s so hard to believe. Last week it was zero degrees and as I walked gingerly over ice and snow beside the pear trees, I saw tiny swollen brave buds pushing out of the twiggy branches.

How is it possible? Buds when it’s below freezing?

There is something thrumming down deep out of sight, silent and stubborn: the insistence of life, the throb of light pulsing in the sap and bark and roots. Gnarled twigs hold veins of liquid that circulates in response to the lengthening frigid days.

Light will always be stronger than dark, sending warmth and vitality to the most hidden places. Even in the Artic Circle, the polar night shortens and daylight cautiously emerges. That mechanical Dutch winter those wrinkled, lumpy crocus corms endured became their route to flower.

I’m so curious about what fruits and flowers are ahead of us.