Four distinct seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, each with its own joys and challenges. In each season there are specific lessons to learn and opportunities to grow. However, winter (in the metaphorical sense) is the one season that can bring out the worst or the best in you.
Someone once told me, “I would exchange a thousand summers for one winter with God”. Hearing that at first made me cringe because the last place I wanted to be was in a winter season.
In nature, a winter season consist of rain, thunder, strong gale force winds and lighting. That seems like a huge chunk of restriction, uncomfortableness, pressure, force, blurred- vision and a great amount of cold days.
One starts to feel the effects of the season even before you try and prepare yourself for what’s about to come. The rain has already fallen and one intends to say, “How long will it rain for? There is so much I need to get done...the rain just ruins everything”.
Many times, it is not about how stormy or rainy winter is but how one passes through the storm that is winter. Are you digging deep or are you merely just surviving through this season, day by day?
Rains falls angry on the roof and there is nothing one can do to change that… So instead of complaining and grappling with what is against you, face what is inside of you to get through the storms of life.
Life brings us the greatest joys, and also the greatest sorrows, but more often than not, life knocks us off our feet when we least expect it to and all of a sudden (BOOM) we are in a winter season, where sadness, anger, hopelessness and loneliness seem to be present our every day. But what we do in this respective season is of fundamental importance for our growth.
It is up to us to work through the layers of skin that has developed perhaps over many winter seasons, where the right avenue as to choices has not been made. In a winter season you will either be prepared to handle what comes next or you will drown, unprepared, for what will follow this season.
In winter you are ultimately being refined, polished, and purified so that you are prepared to face your next season with strength like no other. There is no season that is as rough and tough as winter. It will stretch you like no other. Many times, you will feel like you are drowning and can barely keep above the tide.
Winter is the season where your inner-self is most revealed - the you that most people never got to have deep-heartfelt connection with is disclosed. When you find yourself in a winter season, be present, remain focused and most of all get digging to find the root of the matter.
As Charles Swindoll so beautifully wrote, “How wrong to trudge blindly and routinely through a lifetime of changing seasons without discovering answers to the new mysteries and learning to sing the new melodies. Season are designed to deepen you… To help us grow strong like a tree planted by the rivers of water…”
Tarryn Doolings
Founder Sweet Fragrance