A tree doesn’t survive the winter without healthy roots. Neither do we.
I remember that bleak February morning when my husband and I loaded up our car and drove through the stripped-bare forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains to move into my parents’ basement. Everything felt cold, including my heart. Weeks earlier, my dad was diagnosed with a fast-growing brain cancer which we were all still dazed by.
I left their house only for brisk runs through Ohio’s suburban sprawl, and I came home to more winter as I watched my dad decline. I couldn’t escape this season. I had entered into a spiritual winter.
What I didn’t know then was that this was a holy winter. God was doing something underground that I couldn’t see.
{Continue reading more of my piece on DesiringGod here.}