The Second Winter

Same words at the top of every page here, and they are the ones that matter most. This is not medicine. I am not a doctor or a nurse, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing here ever stands in the place of a clinic or a pharmacist. If anybody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today, and do it before you read another line.

Now. It is the same month again.

That is the thing nobody outside a house like yours understands. The calendar comes round, and the light does the thing it did, and the same smell comes off the ground, and you are standing in the second one.

And the first time, you had something. Not optimism exactly. A kind of forward lean. You could still say to yourself: this will be different by the spring.

And you cannot say that this year. You have tried, out loud, in the kitchen, and it came out flat and you heard it come out flat.

And what you have done with that, because you were raised the way you were raised, is to add it to the list of things that are wrong with you. Less hope than last year, filed under personal failings, alongside everything else.

The mercies are described as arriving daily, not annually

There is a line in Lamentations that people quote off cards, and the context of it is the least cheerful book in the Bible.

They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:23, King James Version)

New every morning. Not new every spring. Not renewed when a situation improves.

And the whole book around that sentence is a man walking through something that has not resolved and is not going to by the end of the chapter. That is what makes the line usable. It was not written by somebody having a good year.

You are looking at a supply that arrives on the morning rather than on the season. Lamentations 3:23 attaches the mercies to each day rather than to any turning point, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody stop waiting for a year to change before anything does.

And that solves the specific thing you have been ashamed about. You do not need last year's amount of hope, because last year's hope was for last year. What you need is this morning's, and that is described as arriving this morning.

You have never once been asked to carry a whole winter's worth at the gate. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies a day at a time to somebody who has been trying to stock up for a season, and it is written that they are new every morning, which is a delivery schedule rather than a promise about outcomes.

Less hope is not less faith

Let me say the practical half, because this is where people like us go wrong.

The feeling that gets named as a failing is not one. Hope that has been out in the weather for two years is worn, and worn is what happens to things that are used, and none of that is a character fault.

What you had the first time was partly hope and partly inexperience. You did not know how long this could go on. You do now. And knowing is not the same as giving up, whatever it feels like at the gate in the second winter.

You are not further from God than you were last year. Lamentations 3:23 sits inside a book with no resolution in it and still states the faithfulness plainly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a worn feeling from a spiritual verdict.

And I will say what this site always says, because it is the line I will not cross. Nobody's outcome has ever once turned on how much hope they could generate at a gate in February.

You were never the engine of this, and no year has ever once been decided by what a person could feel about it. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a false responsibility off somebody going into a second one, and what is written puts the faithfulness on God's side and the morning on ours.

The plain routing, which does not care what month it is

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and on a second winter it matters more rather than less.

If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911, and no season changes that. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, and if going into this one has brought something darker with it, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And whatever has now been going on for two winters goes to a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today, with the length said out loud.

You are carrying a fact about duration that nobody qualified has heard. Lamentations 3:23 was written by somebody who described his situation accurately and at length rather than shortening it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a person to say two years out loud to somebody who can act on it.

Say the second winter, plainly. That phrase does more work in a clinical room than any description of how you feel about it.

You have a plain thing to report and it has never once been a complaint. The Spirit of God is the one who is present with somebody making an unremarkable call in the same month for the second year, and what is written keeps the mercies on a daily schedule while the situation stays exactly where it is.