In the Academy-award winning movie Frozen, Queen Elsa has icy powers which trap her kingdom of Arendelle into an eternal winter. Weaving a narrative related to the bonds of sisterhood, the storyline covers themes of love, self-acceptance, and the power of true love all occurring among the wintry beauty of the Northern Lights and a Scandinavian wilderness landscape. As with most fairy tales, the kingdom is saved from the harsh weather conditions with a Great Thaw after an epic journey by sister Anna, who receives assistance from an ice harvester, a reindeer, a snowman, and some trolls. It really is a fabulously told story with delightful music; however, unlike the fairy tale, Wintering, as Katherine May describes, is rarely a season of magical snowfalls and funny quips from hilarious characters like Olaf.

In the Gift of Winter, my friend Beth Madison, discusses the necessity of wintery seasons as we experience the trials and tribulations of our human existence, and how God uses these seasons for our personal growth and development. Similar to Beth, Katherine May, in her book Wintering, shares the reality with readers that “Plants and animals don’t fight the winter” as humans do, instead, “they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in summer. They prepare. They adapt…Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources…but that’s where the transformation occurs.”

May defines her experience with Wintering as “a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider…Some winters creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence…However it arrives, Wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful.” Not exactly a season any of us would desire to enter, yet we are all painfully aware that it does indeed arrive.

Only a few days after my friend Mandy reached out to share her recommendation to read Wintering by May, Sheridan Voysey offered his encounter with the word after a forced slow down in his life left him feeling resentful. “I fought against my winter, praying summer’s life would return. But I had much to learn.” Voysey then suggests we embrace a spiritual mindset, looking to Scripture like Ecclesiastes. “For though we have little control over them, each season is finite and will pass when its work is done…My time of mourning wasn’t over. When it was, dancing would return. Just as plants and animals don’t fight winter, I needed to rest and let it do its renewing work…For in God’s hands, seasons are purposeful things. Let’s submit to His renewing work in each one.”

Just as the fictional kingdom of Arendelle preferred not to experience an eternal winter, we would desire that these Wintering seasons come and go quickly, but do not lose heart, I have Holy Confidence that God will use these seasons for His greater purposes. Although I, May, and the Scandinavian people of Frozen, prefer Hygge to Wintering, as we hear described in the lyrics of one of the musical’s songs, life doesn’t usually allow us an extended state of comfort or coziness.

So, I propose that we allow God to walk us through our Wintering, allowing His created nature, Scripture like Ecclesiastes, along with our friends and family, to show us how to handle the season with grace and appreciation. “Nature shows that survival is a practice. Sometimes it flourishes—lays on fat, garlands its leaves, makes abundant honey—and sometimes it pares back to the very basics of existence in order to keep living…To get better at Wintering, we need to address our very notion of time. We tend to imagine that our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical… There are times when everything seems easy, and times when it all seems impossibly hard.”

When your Wintering seasons occur and you long for the coziness of Hygge, please place your trust in our Creator, and perhaps He will provide you the Great Thaw. If not, then continue to trust Him to walk you through these difficult days. One day you may have an opportunity to view the growth and transformation that could only occur after a season of Wintering.

If you have walked through a Wintering season, would you consider sharing on the comments below how this difficulty transformed you?

References:

Anderson-Lopez, K. & Lopez, R. (2018). Frozen: The Broadway Musical.

MMay, K. (2020). Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times. [Kindle version]. Riverhead Books.

Voysey, S. (2023, June 5). Seasons. Our Daily Bread. Retrieved from https://odb.org/US/2023/06/05/seasons