How much can human heart take when inner winter lasts forever?

The weather’s been miserable here. We went through a bitterly cold period a couple of weeks ago. We’ve had a couple of other times when strong storms came through, thrashing us with heavy wind and deluging us with rain. By southern standards, it’s been a bad winter.

All the trees around my house look bare and lifeless. My back yard is littered with limbs and branches that I haven’t yet cleared away, debris from a couple of the recent storms. There’s one large tree branch — the one you see above — that crashed down one evening so close that it almost hit my house.

I was in the back yard Sunday afternoon looking at all the debris and the bare trees when I realized that what I was looking at matched the sour mood I’ve been feeling. It seems as though my heart has been experiencing winter for a long time. And then I remembered a simple question from an old song.

“Can you stand the weather — if winter lasts forever?”

And I don’t know how much more winter my heart can stand.

When I was at a grocery store today, the place was packed. I couldn’t help thinking that I didn’t like the thought of being one of these creatures. They all annoyed me, for some reason. I felt completely lost and alien among them.

The world hasn’t changed. I’ve changed. My circumstances have changed. The way I see the world has changed. It started many years ago, but it’s accelerated. I’m more clear than I’ve ever been about what’s important in this life, but my understanding has left me alienated from a dysfunctional culture which is bumper to bumper on a freeway toward some metaphorical hell.

All of the things I once valued now seem useless. They’re the things which this culture taught me to value — and they’re the things that almost everybody else still values, including most who call themselves Christians.

The things which used to seem like ridiculous and idealistic nonsense to me — love for others, community closeness, voluntary sacrifice and shared values — now seem paramount. They’re the things which are ignored by “success culture” here. They’re seen as the sort of things which children might learn at church or school, but which they learn to shed when they join “the real world” as adults.

I don’t know how to make my way from modern western culture to some form of a culture where my values are appreciated and accepted. I don’t know how to build a community around myself or to join a community where my voluntary values are practiced. And I don’t know how to create a family in which to practice the love and understanding and oneness which I’ve come to believe are central to all of this.

It hasn’t been winter outside for quite two months. That winter will be over in another month or two. Spring is just around the corner. But it feels as though it’s been a long and dark winter in my heart for many years now.

When I thought of that question — about winter lasting forever — I thought of the entire song from which the question comes. I don’t know what caused Reese Roper to write the song, but he had to understand some of what I’m feeling to have written it. (I’ve embedded the song below.)

Back when the angels of heaven would sing
Days when I still made you feel something
And before what might be
Became what’s already been
Blizzards and bygones
The frost and no thaw
Airways constricting
And vessels withdraw
And you look around but find yourself all alone
And you hunker down but the cold’s
Already in your bones
I lit a fire
It started then stopped
Elements will conspire
And mercury drop
And you look around but find yourself all alone
And you hunker down but the cold’s
Already in your bones
There’s a flicker of desire
And a memory of youth
A faintly
Glowing fire for some truth
Can you stand the weather
If winter lasts forever?
Can you stand the weather
If winter lasts forever?
Can you stand the weather?
— Reese Roper for Five Iron Frenzy,
“Blizzards and Bygones”

Roper wrote the song for a group called Five Iron Frenzy, which came out of Christian music, so I know he shares my faith and values. But even when you have faith about the ultimate truth, that doesn’t make it any easier to live in this fallen world. And it doesn’t make it any easier to figure out how to live in accordance with the value of love when you’re in a world which thinks love really just means sex.

Right now, I do “look around but find [myself] all alone.” That might be my fault. In fact, it probably is. I could go back and point out mistakes I’ve made which haven’t helped. But I can also say that after all that I’ve learned, “There’s a flicker of desire and a memory of youth. A faintly glowing fire for some truth.”

I can’t live the way the rest of the world wants to, but I can’t really do it without others who are like me — spiritually, philosophically, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally — and I’ve not yet figured out how to connect with them.

I can regret that I didn’t learn all that I’ve learned much earlier in my life, but that doesn’t change anything. Things happened as they did. I had a lot of difficult learning experiences — and I have no choice but to continue down the path from where I am now.

I need for spring to come in my heart. I need to sweep out the old dead things and let new love and light and life grow. But tonight, it’s still winter. There’s a bitterly cold winter outside my house — and a very different sort of winter that’s hurting my heart.

I desperately long for spring — and I cling to faith that spring is coming.