A Prayer for Winter

Oh, Lord.

When the cold hurts bones, dries skin, and sends a chill that doesn't seem to go away,

when every day feels like Winter Solstice and the darkness is suffocating,

when the familiar fear of depression and a sadness with no name start creeping in,

please, be near. 

When a coat doesn't make it any less painful,

when memories from winters past threaten me like a thick storm cloud,

when a downpour of those worst memories attacks, 

when my heart creaks and aches like a rotten piece of abandoned wood,

when there aren’t words to describe how I feel but only tears, 

and the pain moves from mind to body,

please, have mercy.

When hope wains, and it feels like the sun has not just left for the winter but for all time,

when a world that was once vibrant is now gray and brown and dead,

and when it seems like I'm wearing a pair of glasses through which everything has the word "Sad" written on it,

please, have compassion.

Help me to heed your Word which says to do one thing, again and again: 

"Remember."

Help me to remember that you always bring forth spring, and

that history is one long story of Your deliverance.

Hope has been defined as confident expectation. Have pity and give a portion of that hope. The sun sets, but it rises too.

Remove the glasses that distort reality and give me clear vision to see the world, my life, my past, as you see them.

Take away the dread of endless dark and pain and replace it with confidence in my Deliverer.

Help me to remember - 

Who You are and whose I am.

Help me to remember that these two things are the same in the dead of winter and when days are warm and charged with hope and possibility.  The dark and the light are both alike to You. 

Grant the strength to get up, move, do, and act. To not accept defeat but know that with you there is already redemption of the bleakest season. Nothing You've set in stone - promises of redemption and satisfaction with good things - has or ever will be taken away.