8 Ways to Get Through Winter

Winter can be a long tiring experience - both natural and spiritual winters. Whether you are experiencing natural winter right now or not, these suggestions from Bronwen are a great way to work on getting out of a slump or focusing on shifting to a "springtime" state of mind. -Editor

The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them. —Parker J. Palmer

Last winter I almost cracked. In addition to recovering from a surgery, the kids having more than 10 days off school, and the power outages, it felt like too much. So many people around me were trying to be positive and yet also really struggling with the length and intensity of the winter. Although seasons are to be expected in the Northeast, they can also be difficult. Of course it isn't just a physical winter I'm talking about, but also dark times in our lives when we feel there is no life, nothing thriving or growing, no hope. I find myself eager to make a plan for the winter (on whatever level it arrives) so that I could do more than just survive. Maybe with a good plan, I can actually thrive. So after talking to a few friends who'd had a similar brush with despair over the winter, I created the following list of To-Do Winter Ideas.

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Feeling the Lord's Love in Repentance

This week Abby takes a fresh look at the concept of repentance in her life—a concept that once made her feel heavy and stuck now genuinely lightens her load. She finds that this welcomed, new perspective on repentance aligns more convincingly with her understanding of God's true nature—one of love and forgiveness. -Editor

By nature I am a person who tends towards negative, victimized ways of looking at my life. It has taken me years to nurture a more empowered and positive outlook. I feel like for the first time in my life I “get it” in a way that I never have before. Up until recently I think that any time I read the Writings or the Bible or really most any religious or spiritual work, I had the victim lens in front of my eyes. I understood the ideas, but they felt hard, depressing, and not particularly helpful in developing the happy, secure life I longed for. They didn’t feel like the evidence of an all loving and supportive God I hoped to have a meaningful relationship with. Everything felt sort of on the edges of application and realization in my life. But in the last 6 months things have changed for me, and I recently had a very uplifting and hopeful experience reading a passage I’ve probably heard many times before.

Being raised in a minister’s family, I have known the major ideas and teachings of the New Church for as long as I can remember. I don’t remember thinking about or hearing the word repentance for the first time, so obviously it’s been an idea that I’ve had in mind for years. I was recently reading the Seven Practices of Peace spiritual growth program produced by General Church Outreach and came across this sequence of quotes over a few pages (40-41). As I was reading them the idea of repentance struck me in a new way.

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Failure is Not a Detour

Lori peers over her shoulder at all that failed to thrive in her life, despite her clear intentions and decisive actions. Though many of her dreams have not been realized, she is reaping where she did not sow. -Editor

This is a theme I have been sashaying with for a long time now. I am only in my fifties but the view over my shoulder has a trail of broken dreams that I believed in with my whole being. Many of them died.

John and I articulated a plan of planting a church congregation in New Mexico in the 80's. I do not remember any space parceled out for doubt that we would succeed. We had prayed about this. John had studied the demographics until he could recite them by heart. We had no gap between our clasped hands for The Goal to slip through. But after three years of living and breathing it, we let it go like a trapped bird and watched it fly out the window. Yet in the silence that stayed behind to keep us company I learned that there is life after failure. I have more respect for John for reaching and losing, not less. There are gray and white memories of our family of six hovering below the poverty line, reminding me that I have lived with less than I have now. Failure made me stronger, insulating me from entitlement.

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