Escaping Winter

My last couple of years back East, Baltimore had more snow than Buffalo. I have distinct memories, sitting down in my cool basement with snow 3-4 feet high outside my back window. I remember sitting there chilled to the bone. I thought for a while I had seasonal depression.

It seemed the world would slow down so much bound by the frozen ground. At first snow, I was charmed by the winter. Some of my best memories are of walking around at night in the fresh covering of snow. There is a strange warmth and any light is reflected and illuminates all the darkness around you. But then come the days and weeks afterward as the frigid, fierce wind would blow and the snow would turn black from mixing with the dirt of the day. And it seemed as if it would never go away.

January of 2004 I moved my whole family to Las Vegas. That winter was colder than I expected. But our family rallied together to battle loneliness. God provided friends to provide companionship. And the sun's warmth was inescapable. I believed I had left the effects of the winter behind for good.

Until March of 2006, I had known very little winter in my time in Vegas. But winter's oppression returned. It had been so long since our last encounter that I did not recognize winter. It did not follow its past patterns. It was if it had been searching for me, saving its brutal blast until it would find me hiding in the desert. And for the past months, C.S. Lewis' White Witch has ruled over the land I occupy in my soul.

Swindoll writes:

"But there is something strangely solitary about winter. Altogether unlike the other three seasons, winter pleads for companionship...Just as the calendar cannot skip those bone-chilling months, we cannot escape these barren days! Prisoners in our own dungeons of discourgement, loneliness, and spiritual impotence, we struggle to keep our equilibrum...to make sense out of such apparent insanity. It seems as though God has forever sealed shut the storm windows and drawn the drapes on hope and happiness."

I resonate with some of those words. I would also add apathy, frustration, doubt. I have not seen significant snow in years, but I find myself looking out the back window of my soul to see that the snow is once again piled up 3-4 feet. The White Witch reigns.

But...I hear that Aslan is on the move.