Winter Was Where God Loved Me Loudest

I’m currently writing my book, Worthy, a memoir of becoming. This little winter chapterlet found me recently, and I wanted to share it with you.

It was easy, mostly.
Even in the deepest winter, I felt more held than I ever had. More surrounded. More whispered to by life itself.

And yet - winter is winter.

There were still days when the path felt long and solitary, when I would look around and think, Where is everyone? Who walks in love with me now?

It was in one of those quiet, bare-boned days that I felt it. That unmistakable, familiar presence I used to chase. Not the Jesus I grew up with—the one I was taught to strive toward, to earn, to impress, to perform for. But the Jesus who had been here the whole time.

what good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness. - John Steinbeck

A God not waiting on a mountaintop or locked behind doctrine or withheld in shame. A God who sat beside me on the cold floor of my own becoming, breathing with me, steady and near.

Oh.
Right. You’re here.

It wasn’t a theological revelation. It wasn’t “faith” the way I had been taught to understand it.

It was recognition.
Like remembering an old friend who had never left.

This human path - the ache, the longing, the desert prayers whispered into the dark - He knew it. Not because I explained it well, or repented right, or opened my Bible in the morning. But because He walked the human story too.

And suddenly I saw it: Perhaps this winter wasn’t just about surrender.
Perhaps this winter was a falling-in-love.

Not with a man.
Not with an outcome.
Not even with the future I hoped was coming.

But with God Herself - the One I could finally breathe with, finally relax into, finally trust without contorting myself into holiness.

A God who didn’t ask me to nail myself to any cross.
A God who didn’t demand I be better or try harder or prove my devotion.

A God vast enough to be mystery, close enough to be breath, gentle enough to hold my loneliness without rushing it away.

In the second winter of my singleness, I found myself ravished -
not romantically, not erotically, but cosmically - by a love so extravagant it made my knees soft and my heart unclench. By a grace that didn’t ask me to sacrifice anything except the belief that I was alone.

And in that love, I let myself be held:

my ache for partnership,
the quiet ache for a love my body still remembered,
my hope for a future full of joy and peace -

all of it resting in the hands of an all-consuming, all-encompassing Presence whispering,

Dear one,
I’m right here.

And I realized that maybe winter had never been punishment, or silence, or being forgotten.

Maybe winter was simply where God loved me the loudest.