When Our Hearts Turn Cold in the Winter of Suffering

Just as Jesus comforted his mother as he died, so he comforts us.

When the snow begins to flurry in the sky for the first time of the season, some of us squeal with excitement with eyes lit up like children’s. Donning mitts and hats, we run to twirl under heavy flakes and gather snowballs.

But others, we slide the curtains shut and groan. We know this isn’t the first—it feels like we just got rid of this stuff a handful of months ago—and we know it isn’t the last. So we close ourselves away, turn up the heat, and dream of spring, wishing perhaps we could burrow inside like the black bear and sleep away the winter days.

During a blizzard of suffering, I drew the blinds down in my heart. I pulled inward so I could survive. I eked out a small corner for myself and gave the bare minimum to the world. I didn’t know any other way forward. I met the needs of my family, I checked off the homekeeping list, and then I crawled back into the darkness. When I sat down for a check in with my counsellor, she said I had shut down—my eyes were distant and my voice monotone. I went into hibernation to finish the icy winds of our suffering.

Morning Haze by Leonard Ochtman (1909)

I turned cold against God. I still prayed at meals, I still read my Bible and Christian living books, I attended church, and I sang through family worship. But bitter winds of winter climbed like frost over every bit of my heart. When I read passages about God providing for and never abandoning his people, I wanted to fling the Bible against the wall. While I remained calm on the outside, inside I raged at those passages.

“How dare you?” I cried out in my mind. “How dare you declare that you love me, that you provide, and that you will never abandon your people! You abandoned me! I cried out, day and night, and nothing changed. You never helped me! You further broke me. You say you will not snuff out a smoldering wick, but you drenched me. You say a bruised reed you will not break, but you stomped on me!”

I feared for my faith as I considered these words, so I stopped saying them altogether. I said the nice ones—I prayed for my children, my pastors, and anyone who asked me to—but I didn’t pray for myself or ask God questions anymore.

That’s when the frost of bitterness crackled even thicker over my heart. I stewed in silence with the unanswerable questions, because I feared the only answer was unbelief.

In the darkest, coldest winters of suffering, the spinning and howling snow can make us blind. As we climb inward to hibernate through the difficulties, we pull the drapes closed so we can no longer see. As we do, we plead with God to bring the spring, each day peeking out between the curtains to see if God melted the ice and snow yet.

When we see that he still hasn’t brought the sunshine or banished the frost, we accuse him of unfaithfulness, and we start to believe spring is a figment of our imagination. We scoff at those who had announce the coming of springtime.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, received the greatest answer not just to her prayers, but the prayers of her entire people: The Messiah was finally coming. Mary felt such joy when Gabriel announced that she would bear the long-awaited, serpent-crushing Savior that she burst into song. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” she sang, “for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name” (Luke 1:46–49). She deeply felt the favor of God.

But we know the sword that would one day pierce her own soul (Luke 2:35). A little over thirty years later, she crumbled at the foot of the cross in John’s arms as she beheld her firstborn son hang bloody and beaten on a Roman cross, the cruelest of deaths possible.

Did she have eyes to see that day how her and her people’s greatest prayer was being answered, even as the sword pierced her own heart with the greatest grief a mother can know? Did she know that out of this suffering God was bringing about his perfect gift to us all?

Regardless of what Mary understood or what she knew, Jesus didn’t look at his mother with heartless stoicism. He didn’t tell her to get over it because he is sovereign. He didn’t remind her what the angel said to her.

In her grief, her dying son and Saviour sought to comfort her, even as he bore the sins of the world upon his beaten back. “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (John 19:26–27).

And we know that Jesus took care of her in an even greater way than this: By his death and resurrection, her sins—and the sins of all his people—were covered because of his sacrifice.

God does the same for us. As I hurled accusations of abandonment and unfaithfulness in the midst of my own suffering, when even prayers of lament didn’t feel possible, God remained by my side and loved me. As I shook my fists and demanded that he show me his love, he carried me and sustained me through the hardest grief and darkest trials I have faced. While my heart remained hard, he waited and patiently worked to thaw it.

Once my heart beat again with warmth and life, he took my chin in his hands and lifted my gaze to see how he had remained with me all this time. He showed me that winter landscape from the mountaintops, only this time with eyes of faith to see his hand. As I wept with both repentance and gratitude, he didn’t cross his arms and say I told you so—he welcomed me with his embrace.