#1 Winter's Gloom

The other day, I was reflecting on the condition that my life is in. Honestly, sometimes it feels a little gloomy. I’m busy all the time with different commitments, I have very few people around, and sometimes it feels like I’m only getting what I need to survive. I’m not saying this as a cry for help. I’d say that I’m still in a pretty stable spot right now, all things considered. It’s just that sometimes my life looks more like a supervillain origin story than a Hallmark Christmas flick. 

And as I was reflecting on all of this, I was struck like lightning with an analogy for my life: 

Cold! 

I realized that my life felt like a cold, dark winter, and that perhaps the way out was through this analogy. My mind started filling up with tie-ins to frostbite, cold, and the post-christmas winter in general. So that’s where we’re headed for the next two weeks: into the January gloom in order to get out of the funk that so often holds us down. 

Maybe your life just hit rock bottom. Maybe that flash-freeze hit you out of nowhere as your boyfriend or girlfriend dumped you. Or maybe you just lost your job. Or maybe it’s nothing more than the natural part of life that you are in-like the post-holiday slump. Whatever the case, sometimes you feel like your life is a bitter, cold winter. A winter that will never end, leaving you in a permanent state of suckage. I’m here to tell you that whether or not your situation will always be horrible, there are still things you can do to redeem the time, making it something that borders on pleasant. 

After all, who doesn’t love curling up by the fire on a cold winter’s night? We often idealize that scene, but we rarely reflect on the surrounding bad parts. That’s because that warm feeling of curling up in our cozy houses seems to melt away all the pain and suffering that swirls all around us. But, as always, I’m not here to offer you a cosmic painkiller. Sadly, I can’t make the suffering of the world go away. What I can offer is a way through the storm-a survival guide of sorts. Sometimes we’ll still have to enter the cold, and other times we have to say no to an opportunity and stay inside instead. The bottom line is this: no one controls the weather, but even the harshest of winters will still come to an end. And when it does, we can find ourselves ready to wake to a wonderful spring as life bursts forth once again.

And a meta-remark before we get started: this will branch into some new territory for me. I feel like this is going to get a little more abstract than the stuff I usually do on movies and how-to’s. So if a particular post feels like chewing on nails to try to get through, it’s probably because I was equally uncomfortable writing it. I’ll do my best to be as practical as I can, though. Just know you may have to cut me some slack as I try something new. But it’s weighing on me pretty heavily to at least try to write this, so here we go! 

I pray that this series plants a great seed in you. That you find yourself warming up by the fireplaces of life, and that your outlook on winter storms are forever changed for the better. 

Until Next Time

May Peace be your Guide.