Every year, I find myself getting a little anxious as soon as the air begins to chill. 

I wouldn't go as far as to call it seasonal depression, but there's always a layer of heaviness that settles in as the days grow darker. I thrive in the warmth and the sunshine; the winter months feel a little like withering.

I want to like autumn, I really do—I love the idea of it, of cozy days and colorful leaves and curling up with a book and a steaming mug. But all year long, I dread it, because I know it means that winter is coming and soon everything around me will be dying.

So I grit my teeth and burrow in, waiting with bated breath for spring to come back around.

Normally I feel like I'm the only one—like everyone else is diving headfirst into fall, sprinting towards the -ber months with their PSLs held high. But this year I've seen reticence laced into so many conversations, friends just as hesitant as I am to bring in the new season. 

I still have so many friends who started rejoicing the second the temperature dropped below 70, but just as many are feeling like life has been one long winter for a while now. They aren't ready for the world around them to reflect that any more than their circumstances already are. 

-----

During one of the hardest winters of my life, I took up walking. 

It made absolutely no sense to anyone at the time, least of all me. To know me is to know that if it's cold enough to need a jacket, I'm probably doing my best not to go outside at all. But during that season, I found myself tugging on a beanie and wrapping myself in scarves on a near daily basis to trek up and down the streets of my neighborhood.

I felt stuck in nearly every area of my life, carrying so much that wasn't mine to hold anymore but that I had no idea how to let go. That I didn't want to let go. I walked thousands upon thousands of steps that winter, my health app happier with me than ever before as I tried to figure out what to meant to start new. 

My camera roll from those months is filled with pictures of trees—tall and bare and reaching for the skies. I would snap them as I walked, capturing the bleak afternoons for my own memory. I guess I wanted to remember the miles, even if I had no idea what they were leading me towards. They just felt like ruts in the road, a path worn down to the core.

-----

When I think of autumn, I think of my tiny university tucked away in the mountains.

The semester that I returned to campus after a year and a half of studying online due to the pandemic would be my last as I barreled towards a December graduation. Those months had a strange, dreamlike quality to them. Everything was just like it had been when I'd left seventeen months prior, and yet nothing was the same at all. Knowing it would be my last semester only added to the transience of it all. I watched the leaves flutter to the ground and knew that once they had all fallen, I would drive away and wouldn't come back.

It was like a ticking clock, watching the trees grow barer by the day. The day that I took my final class, I walked around campus afterwards by myself in silence. I took pictures of the leaves still hanging on. 

-----

The winter I walked, I couldn't shake the feeling that too many pieces of myself had died over the past two years.

So much of my life felt unrecognizable; I didn't feel like myself anymore. Or rather, I didn't know how I could feel like myself anymore with so much of me missing.

And sometimes I think autumn can feel like that—like everything around you is dying, and you're pretty sure that you're dying along with it, and you don't know how to reconcile it all. 

But here's the thing: trees lose their leaves as a form of self-protection. By letting the leaves fall to the ground, the tree is able to conserve resources to pull it through the winter. It's able to store the nutrients it needs to make it to spring—to growing again.

Without letting go, the tree wouldn't make it to the new season. It wouldn't grow the way it needs to. 

Sometimes, some things have to die in order for something new to spring up.

Friend, if it feels like you're losing more than you ever get to hold on to, know that this isn't your forever. Life is filled with so much ebb and flow, and the best part about the inevitability of change is that while we may not get to hang on to everything we want to hang on to forever, we don't stay stuck in the stagnant, pain-filled places forever, either. 

There is more there is more there is more.

And this place you're in—there's purpose here. There's growth happening, even when it's so deep below the surface you can't see it yet. 

Sometimes you have to shed.

Sometimes it's going to ache.

But the good stuff? Light, and warmth, and buds poking out from barren branches?

It's always on the other side.

it's Holy Week and I'm tired

A friend asks how I’m celebrating Holy Week this year, and I admit to her that I don’t know how other than to crawl into it, dragging myself one hand over the other. 

March has been weird this year, as March often is. I’m exhausted. Things have felt heavy.

I want to be the girl who runs towards Easter with intention, dancing her way through the Gospels and filling her home with touches of spring. I want to be drenched in study guides and rolling out fresh dough. Instead, I find myself reaching for my laptop at 2am to wrangle out just one more thing and remembering at 10pm that I never did open my church’s Easter devotional text for the day.

When I tell you I’m crawling, I’m really crawling, friends.

Hannah Brencher talks a lot about the Saturday of Easter week—the day of darkness and grief that came before the resurrection—and that’s where I’m finding myself this year. In the Saturday—in the mess and confusion and weary waiting for the tomb to open.

I remind myself that we have an advantage. We know Sunday is coming.

-----

I’m a girl who clings to words like lifeboats, and “deliverance” has been the one taking up its tent in my mind this week.

The singular beauty I’ve found in being reminded so vividly of how broken our days are is the knowledge that it’s not supposed to be like this—the promise that it won’t always be like this.

I try to steady myself with it. This is the point of this week, I tell myself. There’s a reason He had to die.

There’s a strange stillness here, even when my brain feels like it’s going a million miles an hour. There’s a closeness, when I let there be.

-----

Maybe it’s feeling like Saturday in your world, too.

In the waiting.

In the grief.

In the questions.

There’s a specific loneliness that comes in the heavy seasons. In the times where it all feels like too much and there’s no clear path forward, and in the moments where it seems unfathomable that anyone else can really get your hurt.

Holy Week reminds us that we aren’t putting our faith in a God who hasn’t walked our side of the story, who doesn’t know the brokenness firsthand.

It’s in the darkness that I lean on the humanity of Jesus. That I remind myself again and again: He’s been here, too.

He’s seen the hurt. He felt it, tasted it, bitter and sharp.

And then He paved a way to yank forever from its grasp.

-----

It’s Holy Week, and I’m tired. 

The days are short and long all at once, and I find my prayers are less structured than I’d like and more conversational, which, if I’m honest probably fits my relationship with God more closely, anyway. I whisper prayers in between emails and as I wash my hands, let the words of friends roll over me like oceans of grace.

We’re in the Saturday, friends, and if I’m honest, it’s not my favorite place to be. But all around me, I’m seeing the world wake up again. Most of the branches out my window are still bare and brittle, but the cherry tree is in full bloom. I go outside to sit in the sun and spot tiny purple wildflowers springing up at my feet, tucked away nearly out of sight in the corner of the yard. I find mercy in weird, unexpected places, and I force stubborn hope to push me onward.

Deliverance: “the act of being rescued or set free.”

The stone rolled away. The tomb empty. Breakfast on a beach with a man they watched bleed.

A promise: that one day it will all be new again.

-----

It’s Holy Week, and I’m tired, but I think He was, too.

And so I remind myself—I remind you—that we haven't reached the end yet.

Because I know the Saturday doesn’t last.

Because I know there's more than I can see.

Because I know this is not all there is. I know this is not all that will be.

And I know the world is heavy, but I know my Redeemer lives.

And no matter the Holy Week, that's enough for me.

Happy Holy Week, friends. Sunday's coming. Keep holding on.

wishing you...pink skies?

Well, hello there, 2023. 

The start of a new year always makes me reflective – I know, you never would have guessed. I spend days beforehand mulling over all that the past twelve months have held, wondering what the next twelve have in store, and filling up arguably too many pages in my journal. 

When Saturday rolled around and we found ourselves in the final hours of 2022, I knew there was only one thing to do that would feel like the proper sendoff for a year that I couldn’t quite define. 

And so, I went on a walk. 

I think that I spent more time walking in 2022 than I have in past years combined. I’d never really had the time or space to make it a regular part of my routine before, but suddenly it was my sanity point. Last January marked quite possibly the worst my anxiety had ever been, and walking became a catharsis I didn’t know I needed. I’d pray, or talk to friends, or walk over to a nearby lake to read for a little while. It was such a point of healing for me. 

It only felt fitting to end the year in the way that had most grounded me. The sky was a brilliant blue, the sun warm on my face despite the crisp air. I set out, my phone silenced, to say goodbye to one of the weirdest years of my life in the best way I knew how. 

It had rained earlier in the day, and the world felt fresh, new. Like it was preparing for midnight’s strike right along with me. 

I bumped into my mom and sister at the halfway point of the walk, and we stopped to talk for a minute. “Remember when we went on a walk last year a few days before New Year’s and the sky was so pink?” I asked my mom. “I wish that it was like that again today.” There were streaks of gold along the horizon, but it didn’t look to be a sunset night – which was fine. The blue had been magical enough on its own.

 

We parted ways, and they kept walking while I hung back by the water for a little while. It was getting colder, but I couldn’t bring myself to mind. A piece of me just didn’t want to leave, as if staying by the lakeside would keep me in 2022, as if I could stave off the new year by lingering in the healing the old one had brought. 

Finally, I set off again through the old wooded path back home. It’s winding and steep, and always feels a little bit like stepping into another world.

When I emerged from the trees and looked up, the sky was streaked with pink. 

I actually froze in my tracks. No way.

But there it was – not identical to last year’s, but beautiful all on its own, feathery and light and painted like brushstrokes between the clouds.

I stood at the trailhead, my eyes locked on the sky, wishing that my phone could capture the sight as beautifully as it truly was. Deciding that maybe I didn’t mind it being just for me. 

Because that really was how it felt – like it had been put there just for me. 

As I’ve been taking the time to look back over all that 2022 held, I keep coming back to a single word over and over again – grace. In so many ways, 2022 was my grace year. It was a year I stepped into completely blind and more than a little terrified, and here at its end, I can’t help but marvel at all of the ways grace was laced into my story. The things I never expected, the people I got to have by my side, the healing I didn’t know could come. Grace upon grace upon grace, a God more gracious than I could fathom. 

And after this year of absolutely unwarranted grace, a moment with Jesus and a freshly painted sky felt like the sweetest conclusion to it all. 

I don’t know what 2023 will hold. But I know the One who sustains me, and I know that I’ll be carried through. 

That’s enough. 

As we step into the new year, I want to leave you with these words by Neil Gaiman – a wish for your year. I hope it’s a beautiful one, friends. 

“I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in this world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.”

waiting joyfully

It’s six pm, and the world is dark.

It’s only a few days after Daylight Savings as I’m writing this, a blanket wrapped around me as I sit at my desk, unprepared for the chill the evening would bring. I’m still not used to how quickly the light dissipates now, how I blink and it’s slipped away for the day.

I dread this time of year nearly as soon as the first day of summer hits—as soon as I know that the light will begin fading. It will be June, and I’ll be watching the sunset from the hood of my car at eight pm and I’ll be thinking, I never want to lose this.

I always do eventually; that’s the nature of time. Still, it always catches me off guard, wishing for the light to come back.

In years past, the arrival of November has meant the near-implosion of my world, a season of intense insanity. This year is different, my life more still in nearly every way, and I’ve found myself thinking about how to slip into the season with grace instead of barreling through as I normally have to.

We live in a culture that likes to move at warp speed. We wear busyness as a badge of honor, exhaustion the mark of a life of worth. And yet, in many ways, the change of season acts as a direct contradiction to those tendencies. Slow down, it says. It’s not light out anymore. Your work is done for the day.

In Danish culture, the concept of hygge describes a lifestyle based in coziness and comfort. It centers around warmth, rest, and gratitude, and is a cherished part of life for the Danes. It’s not fancy or elaborate, but it’s about lingering in simple joys and finding contentment in the slow moments of the everyday—and allowing space for that slowness.

As we step into the darker days of late autumn and face the fast-approaching winter, it’s the perfect time to embrace a bit more of the hygge lifestyle. To slow down. To carve out space for slow evenings with warm food and good books. To acknowledge that there’s value in taking time to breathe and to rest with the sun.

Hygge, some people say, is one of the greatest tools to counteracting the heaviness that comes with the winter darkness. It’s not a miracle cure—therapy and medication are still necessary lifelines that can’t be replaced overnight. But it’s been found to greatly alleviate the sadness and anxiety that can come with the winter months.

It’s about powering down and plugging into the life in front of you—and embracing the ways in which that life can become a little softer and a little kinder.

For me this fall, that’s looked like powering down from work as early in the evening as I can, and leaving my laptop on my desk, out of reach—not a novel concept, but a definite jump from the girl who’s spent most of her life bringing her laptop to bed with her into the wee hours of the morning. It’s looked like turning the twinkle lights on more often, and knitting and doing macrame while watching a comfort show with my sisters.

It's meant looking at the life I’m currently living, and finding ways to build new routines into it that are steadier and better. It’s been years since I’ve had any sort of regular nighttime routine, but I’ve been making a point to curl up with a blanket before I go to bed and take the time to go through my planner for the next day, to journal, and to read a few chapters of a novel. Recently, I made a list of all the cozy books I want to take the time to reread over the winter months instead of only trying to barrel through my ever-growing TBR. I’m going to start by jumping into Pride and Prejudice—it really does feel like coming home.

There’s an art to it, really, the act of slowing down. It takes a level of intention and mindfulness that we don’t always gravitate towards. But the rewards are so, so rich.

It reminds me of the words of one of my favorite creatives, Jenna O’Brien, who owns the cutest loose leaf tea business. She celebrated her business’s one year anniversary back in September, and took the time in her newsletter to share how tea had affected her life over the past few years. “Tea reminds me to slow down,” she wrote first and foremost. “It always takes 5 minutes to brew – and so it’s created a practice of waiting joyfully.”

Perhaps, at its core, that’s what hygge is really about—knowing that brighter days will come again, and learning how to wait joyfully until they do.