Navigating Cold Winds

Last year, I sat up the road from a friends house, attempting to process grief and pain. I didn’t have a lot of clarity on what I was feeling, why things had happened, or where to go next, but nature initiated revelation in my heart on Hope. In light of many friends experiencing grief and loss in this season, I thought I would share my moment with you. I pray that reading this would unravel the tension carried in times like these, leading your heart to hope again and your sight to be refreshed.

“I rest below this pine on a hill, far from home, willing to witness the kindness of a creator, manifested in the vast skies spread before me. Cloud overlays cloud, and the passing of one leads only to the seeming birth of another. My soul longs for the rays to break forth and provide relief from the greyness. I yearn to watch this release, that I may experience it in my heart too. If nature holds in itself the potential for such a display, surely His heart longs to gift mine with a reposing sigh.
There’s a strange and beautiful moment that has become very dear in this season. Just as the cool autumn breeze is soaked up by my skin, it collides with the sun pouring out its weighty yet gentle warmth as it escapes from behind the clouds. Fear is a tightness that swells and stirs, then shrivels and settles: an inhaling response to the cold. But when my body begins to urge me to curl up and protect the little heat it still contains, the kiss of sunlight frees me from the tight grip of an anxious tension. A forgetful being, habitual in its dismissal of the light dwelling inside when it runs dim, searches high and low for another source, a tangible reality to deliver comfort. The gracious tendency of the Creator gleefully resists frustration with my mind. He happily abides in a setting sun or whispers through the consolation of a friend – each a tethered release drawing my heart to refocus my gaze on an ever-present Love, more accessible and consistent than anything nature offers. So I shift my eyes inward, and I see a light. On this day, it produces little more than a glowing coal, burnt up and waiting. But it is still enough to birth a small flame with a breath, and on this I depend, on this Creator breath to blow deep as I watch. He is a builder of great bonfires, committing the arson that this exhausted rebel soul longed to feast on.
So may the sun provide the warmth my heart hungers for, and may the cold breeze sweep in the oxygen required to spark a flame from thirsty coals. May I recall the eternal light deep inside that ceases to touch the horizon and positions itself far too close for anything to pass between.
Here I find that the Shining Son redeems a fearful mind in a moment. He unwinds a tightly knotted stomach with ease, and knits into my flesh the closure that only His gaze can bring. Hope seeps beyond the fleeting, into spaces that the creators hands once moulded, and I remember the love that still holds me.”