Soul Friends and Gratitude

One of the coldest adventures of my life was visiting Stonehenge while at a winter team meeting. We wanted to get out for this monumental visit, but we were woefully and inadequately layered for freezing wet wind. So we bypassed the tour and the audio headsets and sprinted around the circle of stones, grabbed a quickly cooling cup of hot chocolate and headed back to the warmth of the van.  The shared misery and accompanying laughter of the both invigorating and terrible experience turned into gratitude for companionship in sharing life along the way.

Thriving in the cold and darkness of winter involves a process of grieving the loss of warmth and light while transitioning into a period of gratitude for its hibernating rest and invigorating cold.  Winter can also describe a season of personal loss and grief in which we hibernate to rest and heal. As humans we share the winter of discontent, fear, and rage that come with injustice and terror. In order to survive our personal as well as communal experiences of “wintering,” we must be attentive to our spiritual well-being.

In her book Wintering,The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May describes “Wintering” as a season of hiddenness.

“Wintering” is a fallow period in life when you are cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress…Perhaps it results from an illness or a life event…perhaps it comes from humiliation or failure.  However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful.

“Sometimes the best response to our howls of anguish is the honest one. We need friends who wince along with our pain, who tolerate our gloom, and who allow us to be weak for a while, while we’re finding our feet again. Short of that, we need to perform those functions for ourselves: to give ourselves a break when we need it and to be kind, to find our own grit in our own time.”   

REFLECT. How do you relate to “wintering” in your current life experience? Would it help to do some howling over hidden grief?  Give yourself the kindness of vulnerable friendship, allowing a friend to walk with you through this season. Who do you know that is crushed with sadness and needs you to be present?

At the darkest hour before his betrayal, Jesus reached out to his three closest friends saying, “My soul is crushed with sadness to the point of death. Stay here…stay awake with me.” (Matthew 26:38 TLB)

WINTER PRACTICE. Soul Friendship.  In the company of others, we journey through every season of life, learning to tell the truth about ourselves with vulnerability and the accountability of giving and receiving love.

A Soul Friend is someone who listens deeply and prayerfully to help you notice where God is present in your life circumstances. The friendship is a safe and healing place to be attentive together to the movement of the Spirit. It is important to establish the expectations and intentionality of walking alongside another in the spiritual journey. Often the connection is only for a season of discernment, grief, or growth.

Pray for and seek out someone who can offer truth with a listening heart:
“And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.” Jeremiah 3:15

WINTER PRACTICE. Gratitude.  Today I received a hand written thank you card from a young minister I support.  Her gratitude was goodness gold. “Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches.” Galatians 6:6

Send a gratitude note to someone who has been a mentor or healer in your life journey.   Surprise your minister or anyone who has helped you or your community with a special delivery.

Practice gratitude with a prayer, song, or poem. Make gratitude a daily practice!

Breath Prayer.  You satisfy my life with good things. Psalm 103:5

Inhale: You satisfy my life.  Exhale: With good things. (Repeat 3-4 times)

The Cold by Wendell Berry

How exactly good it is to know myself in the solitude of winter, my body containing its own warmth, divided from all by the cold; and to go separate and sure among the trees cleanly divided, thinking of you perfect too in your solitude, your life withdrawn into your own keeping to be clear, poised in perfect self-suspension toward you, as though frozen. And having known fully the goodness of that, it will be good also to melt.

Goodness of God by CeCe Winans Listen to this and jot down people you are grateful for or listen in your small group and talk about the lyrics.