Highly Favored

Wind & Breath writing session

In slanted sunlight of a winter yard,
I will rejoice. Not sun enough for warmth
but light enough to lift and bathe my face
in messages from space. The silent yard,
once teeming with cicada wings and green
that creeps in every space, now dormant waits.
The sun still holds us tethered to our place
amidst the galaxies, black holes, and fills
the hungry with good things, with light to see. 
Seeds silent in the frozen soil believe
in sunlight working still in winter chill,
but even if they doubt, they will again
burst buds, flame flowers, and powder pollen
as catkins dangle gold dust in the breeze
and leaves, new oiled, push out into the blue
and acorns unclench fists on branches’ hands.
Unseen, all lies in wait. Buried alive,
my soil glorifies the Lord as frozen dirt.
He has been mindful of its humble state.
So, may it be to me as you have said.
Unthawed, I have yet found favor with God,
and I rejoice that spring needs no belief,
no proof of flourishing beyond the sun
that burns in place to keep us safe in ours.

A Woodland Path in Rosenthal in Winter by Johann Christian Reinhart (1785)

Composition Notes

During our last Wind & Breath writing session, Christina Lynn Wallace read the Magnificat during the Scripture reading portion. Our creative writing exercise was to write for an audience of the Trinity, and Mary’s words were lingering in my mind as I looked out at my brown, January yard. The only green came from the row of red pines by our fence. Every other living thing held leafless branches up in the watery sunshine.

Frozen things sometimes look like dead things. If a blight has struck one of my rose or lilac bushes, I will not know until the lettuce green leaves of spring push their knobs through the bark and show me the difference between a living and a dead branch. Looking like scraggly piles of sticks, these bushes have borne the brunt of our sons’ vigorous capture the flag and tag and football games, yet life courses within the interior of these bushes and trees and buried bulbs. Sap still carries nutrients to these dormant living things, sight unseen.

When Mary received Gabriel’s words, she had no evidence of the life within her. She received it in faith. She received the words so fully, she even rejoiced. She rejoiced in her state before she saw any proof. Her words instructed the verbiage of this poem’s focus on the frozen yard as I thought about her belief in the unseen.

In many respects, 2025 was a year in which I sought God earnestly and heard “No” and “Wait” on almost every count. The weariness and disappointment took a toll. I realized how much I had taken cheerfulness for granted, assumed it was part of my personality, rather than recognizing it as a product of circumstance. I was left with questions. Who was I when I wasn’t smiling? I cried my way through church services. It felt like God had opened a floodgate, and I couldn’t close it.

I sought the Psalms for solace and found that I was allowed to tell God things like, “Why are you far off? Are you hiding in times of trouble?” and “Will you forget me forever?” and “Why you have rejected me?” In the past, I had glossed over those verses and dwelt lovingly on the declarations of God’s nearness and faithfulness. All of Scripture is God-breathed, and those verses are there for a reason. These songs of lament met me in a year of winter. They gave me voice to face what needed to be faced and to name it in God’s presence rather than going away from him to grapple with the hard.

Sometimes Ecclesiastes tells us the obvious. There’s a season for everything. Traditionally, I have loved winter and defended it to all detractors. (It comes from being born in a blizzard. Snow is in my blood.) But for the purposes of this poem, I let myself see what other people see when they want winter to be over: ugly barrenness in shades of brown, patches of dirt which look as though they are longing for grass to grow over them, a world devoid of color and softness. It is cold and bleak and unforgiving. As I wrote the poem, I realized something I’ve never thought about that could perhaps be so obvious it belongs in Ecclesiastes next to a statement about the seasons. The sun is always anchoring us in place. Without the sun, we would go flying off of our orbital path and get lost in the cold depths of space. Even when the winter sunshine seems ineffectual, it is doing its most important job: not just promising there will be a coming spring but also tethering us to our spot in the galaxy so another spring is even possible.

Winter does not last forever. The Lord has brought different mercies into my life than the ones I was asking for. He has provided lovingkindness in the body of Christ. Two friends told me this week that our friendship has gone deeper now that my mask of optimism has slipped. Very likely, this season has allowed me to grow in compassion for myself and others. I have been given the chance to seek God for his face instead of his hand, even as I keep bringing him my requests. I do not know the specific burdens you carry, but I know the one who can give you rest. It might be rest that feels more like a frozen tundra than a beach, but there are psalms for that too. I encourage you to pray the psalms of lament and dare to get as raw as these psalmists who tell God when they feel forsaken. This year it occurred to me that Jesus himself prays this on the cross. He has faced winter in our stead, so we can look forward to the coming spring.

Why, my soul, are you downcast?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,

my Savior and my God.