The Girl Who Lives in Winter

Dusk was not a time of day there.

It was a constant. 

The sky remained dim, never quite turning black. Only a suffocating gray that pressed low against the tree tops, as though it intended to crush whatever remained beneath it. Branches stood thin and skeletal, clawing upward in a rigid defiance. Their dark shapes carved against an unrelenting sky that offered no mercy. Evergreens tangled among them, stretching outward in the dark, their needles stiff and unforgiving in the frozen air. 

Snow did not drift down gently. 

It accumulated. 

Thick. Heavy. 

Swallowing roads, fields, and memories, burying them beneath it without distinction. It gathered heavily on the limbs of the trees, bending them downward under its weight. Limbs straining, wood groaning in protest as they were forced toward the frozen ground. 

The earth was smothered.

No birds broke the dim monotony of the sky. 

No wind moved. 

No life stirred. 

Winter did not arrive in this land. 

It conquered it. 

At first glance, the landscape appeared empty, devoid of anything but an endless white. 

But near the base of a bowed pine, a snowdrift slightly elevated from the rest.

A subtle rise in the earth.

A shape too uneven to be natural. 

The snow had gathered there as it had everywhere else. 

It fell over the form without hesitation. 

It layered itself over the form with the same cold indifference it showed the trees. 

Only the faintest trace of breath disturbed the surface.

A barely visible tremor in the powder. 

Beneath the layers of white lay an unmoving figure. 

Ice and snow clung to her clothes and threaded through her hair. Frost gathered on her lashes, resting still against her cheeks. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, legs drawn inward towards her belly. Thin lines of ice traced the curve of her cheeks, tears long since frozen where they had fallen. 

Beneath the layers of white lay an unmoving figure. 

She had not fought the snow when it began to gather around her. 

For fighting required warmth, 

and warmth had long since left her. 

In a time long before this she had found herself wandering through the snow. 

Arms bundled tightly around her, head bowed to combat the harsh wind and driving flurries of snow. She pressed on, movements slowed by the harshness of the cold. 

The chilled air made every inhale sharp and painful. Her lungs ached along with her limbs. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen spring. 

She wandered and wandered, slower and slower.

The cold slowly ate away at her will to press on. 

Over time she grew numb to the chill of the wind, used to the pain of the cold. 

One day she found herself without the strength to carry herself forward. For a moment, she let herself pause. Perhaps if she just rested for a moment, it would be easier to go on. 

So she lowered herself to the ground and sat. As the cold of the ground seeped into her numb skin, she found an odd sense of comfort in the painful sensation. So she lowered her aching and frozen body to the ground. The harshness of the wind was lessened by the mounds of snow around her, and she found herself being lulled into a false sense of calm, rest. 

This was not peace, but for the circumstances she was in, with no hope for finding spring remaining, she took solace in her little spot in the snow. 

Slowly, she curled her legs up and toward her belly, wrapping her arms around herself, and closed her eyes, the dim light finally becoming a welcomed darkness. She laid there, still, as the snow began to accumulate around her. Tears slowly fell down her cheeks, in the cold and stillness they froze on her face. Frost covered her lashes, and her body was blanketed in snow. Numbness and cold wrapped her in a blanket, and there she laid. 

As her breathing slowed, the wind ceased its moaning, the trees stopped their swaying, and stillness took over the land. 

Beneath the layers of white lay an unmoving figure. 

A girl who had lost her hope, and learned to find comfort in the cold and pain surrounding her. And there she was determined to remain. 

But then, after what could have been any number of days or years, a quiet splintering echoed faintly in the silent stillness. 

The sound tried to pull her from her stasis, but she refused awareness. 

Beneath the layers of white lay an unmoving figure. 

And above the source of the faint noise, the subtle change, a branch had almost imperceptibly begun to thaw. 

Slowly, so slowly, a drop of water slid its way down that cold still branch, and fell down, landing harshly onto the frozen cheek of the figure buried in snow. 

The cold had silenced everything beneath her skin. It had been cruel, but it had also been consistent.

As the drop slid down her frozen face, something beneath the surface stirred.

Not hope or joy, but pain.

The sensation on her frozen and untouched skin burned fiercely. 

She tried to turn her face away from the change.
Tried to press herself deeper into the cold that had held her for so long.

But she found that because something had changed, the cold was once again unwelcoming. The careful cocoon of numbness she had surrounded herself in had been shattered.

She tried to bury herself deeper into the ground, but the snow no longer yielded to her. 

More drops fell, melting away the snow that had hidden her, and the light began to seep in. The light, dim as it was, brought a slight amount of warmth with it, and it gently touched her cheek. 

The warmth did not feel like mercy.
It felt like an intrusion.

The dark cold was merciless, but it had also been familiar. It asked nothing of her except for her stillness.

This new sensation demanded something else.

Her fingers shifted beneath the snow, and the sensation rushed through her like fire. She clenched her jaw against it. The cold had been steady. It had asked nothing. But this new sensation demanded everything.

She could remain where she was. The snow would not protest. It would settle. It would finish what it had begun.

And for a moment, that felt easier.

But the gray above her had changed.

It was still heavy. Still dim.

But not as dark.

A thin fracture of pale light stretched somewhere beyond the treetops. Not brilliant or golden, only present.

She did not trust it.
She did not welcome it.

But she could no longer pretend it was not there.

Winter had taught her how to endure. But deep beneath the ache in her limbs and the sting in her skin, something older than the cold stirred within her, a memory that she had once been made for more than survival.

A promise.

That darkness does not endure forever.
That morning comes, whether she feels ready for it or not.     

And light comes with the morning.

Another drop fell.

This time, she did not flinch.

Her frozen lashes fluttered slightly,

and slowly,

painfully,

she turned her face toward the light.       

Not because she felt strong, 

not because the cold had loosened its grip,

but because somewhere beneath the ache, 

she remembered that she had been made for the light.

…………………………………………………………………………

In times of deep winter, depression, anxiety, trials of any kind, the world can often feel like a dark and discouraging place. 

In the battles of mental health, trials, or even just our daily battles with the flesh, we can find ourselves taking comfort in what we know. Sometimes that means painful and hard things. Sometimes when struggling with depression, it is easier to sit in it than to try to work through it. 

In this story, our character has fought through this season of winter for a long time, and inevitably when her own strength failed, she found a fragile and false sense of peace by surrendering herself to the dark, the cold, to her depression. When the first signs of spring arrived, she did not welcome them. She wanted to hide from them, to remain in what was familiar, even though it brought pain and misery.  Because winter had taught her how to survive, but spring demanded she live. 

Sometimes we grow so accustomed to winter that we forget it is a season. Depression becomes our climate. Numbness becomes safety. Stillness becomes survival. And when God begins to thaw what we have learned to live inside of, it does not always feel like mercy. Sometimes it feels like pain returning to places we buried long ago. Sometimes moving towards the light is harder than remaining in the dark.  But Scripture reminds us that “weeping may endure for a night, yet joy comes in the morning.” Psalm 30:5

Winter is not eternal. Darkness does not last forever. And even the smallest turning toward the light is not unnoticed by the One who promised that spring would come. There is hope on the other side of whatever you are enduring.