Experiencing a Good Winter

A good winter? Is there such a thing? Like only experiencing “pressure” when you go to the dentist, a good winter seems quite the oxymoron. “Yes there was a tad bit of pressure when you injected that needle in my gums. Thanks for the heads up.”

Winter is harsh, unending, and unmerciful – at least in most places. As I sit in 80 degree California weather, not so much. But I remember well the Colorado mornings during adolescence, desperately attempting to scrape ice off my front windshield before my lungs shattered like the ice I was trying unsuccessfully to remove. Every breathe feeling like tiny icicle daggers were lodging themselves in the back of my throat. Oh yes I remember those winter mornings well, and I would not describe them as good.

Spring is the life of the party with flowers blossoming, birds chirping and grass growing. Winter is the season specifically designed to kill everything. What a Debbie-Downer. So how can winter actually be good?

A GOOD WINTER? BON IVER

Bon Iver is a music group, originally headed by one guy named Justin Vernon. In 2007 Bon Iver busted onto the music scene out of nowhere – literally. No band, no label, no record deal, just Justin singing his heart out in a cabin in the middle of Wisconsin.

The story of how Justin found himself at this place started with brokenness – his band broke up, his girlfriend Emma broke up with him, which broke him, as that kind of breaking usually does. Then his body officially broke, as he contracted mono.

So Justin left; left town, left his band, his friends, left the spot at the park he and Emma used to go, their pasta dish they shared every Tuesday – just left, pain and questions why – his only luggage. That and his guitar.

He went to a Wisconsin cabin in the dead of winter for three months and put all his questions into nine tracks of brutal beauty, offering it to her, For Emma, Forever Ago. Calling the experience and himself, Bon Iver, which is a slight variation for the French phrase, Good Winter.

“I…went up there because I didn’t know where else to go and I knew that I wanted to be alone and I knew that I wanted to be where it was cold.” – Justin Vernon

 

TRANSFORMATIVE WINTER

If there is no winter there is no spring, as death has to precede life. We know this. But it does not make the bitter cold any more enjoyable. As I listen to Justin sing over and over in the video below… What might have been lost, what might have been lost, someday my pain, someday my pain, I have to admit I can’t help but get a little teary-eyed.

My tears are for him, for the pain that breathed those words. My tears are for my own winter years ago when a love relationship I had was breaking up and I was breaking. A love relationship not with Emma, but with God.

I wrote for three years my own 160 page song of sorts that I titled To Be Determined.  Every answer felt pending, every truth out of reach. I was immersed in indefinable’s, hoping each word typed would bring definition. To be Determined. For God, Peace Forever Ago.

“Winter clears the landscape, however brutally, giving us a chance to see ourselves and each more clearly, to see the very ground of our being.”  – Parker Palmer

But in my winter, pain birthed truth.

Questions, wisdom.

Loneliness, with an understanding of how real God’s love is as He met me on those bitter cold nights with a warm blanket.

I wrote, praying each word would bring life. And without fanfare, the frozen ground once only filled with decay, sprouted new green shoots, flowers forming in places that would’ve been unimaginable just months before. Winter became spring.

So if you’re sitting in what feels like an unending winter right now, know that God can turn a harsh winter into a beautiful spring.