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3 min read

Dealing Faithfully with the Winter Blues

 Several posts on the Impact Blog this month address some of the influences that can affect our mental state, such as lack of sleep or trauma. Particularly appropriate for the Inland Northwest in February is the “winter blues,” which local author Judy Palpant discusses here. Next week, we will look at clinical depression and how we can help our fellow Christians who struggle with it.

A Change in the Weather 

By Judy Palpant

My good friend just left Spokane for Mexico to visit her father. She’ll be gone several weeks. When she returns she hopes to find all the snow and ice melted, dry roads, blooming crocuses and longer, brighter days. May it be so.

I’m left behind and can only imagine her blue sky and sunshine as I stare out my window at a dreary landscape: piles of old snow and a gray sky.

Some years ago we left for a medical mission trip in early February and returned the end of that same month. Compared to the life and color of Kenya, Spokane’s bleak mid-winter depressed me. We’d relished the long days of sunshine there on the equator. Back here darkness fell too soon.

My neighborhood was a ghost town. No people bustled here and there as they did along the roads and in the markets of East Africa. No color popped out of the frozen ground. But in Kenya pansies, daisies, mums and poinsettias all bloomed at once in a single flower bed. Judy-Palpant-1.jpg

Pondering my plight, I sighed facing yet another dull day. Just then a flock of red-winged blackbirds flew into our sunburst locust tree. For a full half hour they flew and chattered amongst the bare branches. I watched and wondered. Their visitation cheered and thawed my paralyzed heart. Gratitude gradually warmed and filled my soul. I praised the Creator God and Giver of every good gift.

Those birds never returned. Perhaps our tree looked like a good rest stop on their migration route to some other place. I still savor the memory. Those birds stirred my heart. Their motion and commotion moved me off square one. When I was caught in a mental loop constantly comparing Kenya and Spokane, they brought a breath of fresh air. I could accept this place called home.blackbird.jpg

But what about the times when God doesn’t send a flock of birds to cheer us? Is the inner person dependent on the outer circumstances?

In Moby Dick, Herman Melville describes the whale as a mammal that keeps the same inner temperature whether swimming in the frigid arctic waters or the warm waves off the coast of Australia.

How can we do the same—keep our spirits warm and hopeful in the mid-winter when darkness dominates? The canvas is blank. The heart is empty. Light dims. Life slows. 

Years ago when homeschooling our kids, we’d pick up a woman from our church once a week and take her on an outing. Ruth lived in an assisted living facility. Though her mind was sharp, she suffered from Parkinson’s Disease. For some reason, she was placed in the Alzheimer unit.  We’d load a wheelchair in the car so that she wouldn’t have to walk long distances.

How she relished picnics in the summer sunshine. She’d regale us with poems she memorized as a child or tales about teaching the children of the men building the Grand Coulee Dam. Upon returning to the nursing home, I’d push her wheelchair through the doors. She’d always say with a smile, “There’s been a change in the weather.” Gone the blue sky. Gone the summer breezes. Gone, the chatter of children.

Ruth, a veteran adult Sunday School teacher, read Scripture daily. She mended cushions and clothes for the other residents in the facility. Every night, after the nurse pulled her curtains shut, Ruth would get up and open them so she could see the moon and stars. Then she’d crawl back into bed and pray. Like the whale, Ruth’s daily choices and routines maintained the steady spiritual temperature of her soul regardless of her circumstances.

hands-on-bible.jpg

I can’t command another flock of birds to choose my yard for an hour or two. I cannot engineer such visitations or provisions. But I can open my eyes and relish the frost on the twigs. Accept my limitations imposed by weather or circumstances. Choose to be grateful. Practice nurturing essentials for my spirits—music, poetry, quilting.

The other night I took my 96-year-old mother out on the front porch. Four years ago she came from Colorado, where the sun shines and the sky is blue even when it snows. During her transition to life in Spokane, she surprisingly did not complain or compare the climates. Now this is home.

As she breathed in the chilly nighttime air and surveyed the mounds of snow, I asked her, “What are you thinking? She replied, “For the beauty of the earth. The trees are dressed in beauty. It’s so still, you could carry a candle.”  Yes. I imagined walking out into the darkness holding a candle with a steady flame.

“The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord,” Solomon wrote (Proverbs 20:27). Though my heart’s flame be flickering and nearly out, I pray to the Light of the World to rekindle it. I repeat a prayer by St. Ignatius I’ve found to be very helpful:

“Come Holy Spirit. Thank you for my life. Lord, I want to see. Have mercy on me. Show me the way. Amen.”

Judy Palpant.jpg

 

Judy Palpant is an educator, author and speaker. She is the mother of three adult children and 11 grandchildren. She and her husband Sam spent six years in Kenya serving as medical missionaries. Upon returning to the US, they moved to Spokane where they served as  foster parents with Healing the Children (housing six children) and volunteer staff at Christ Clinic. She has a passion for the lost and broken, wherever they may be found.

 

 

Another way to survive the long winter is to make a delicious soup to warm body and soul. Click below to get a delicious recipe from Chef Derek Mobley at UGM.

Click to download the Cioppino soup recipe

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