You are Winter, know only one season.
Gray silhouettes. Hopeless struggle.

Life is not sleeping, soon to stretch and wake.
For you life is dead.
You mourn it, but love the weeping.
 
You revel in sickness . . . disaster . . . defeat.
Few words lack complaint.
Some macabre delight glimmers as you spew them.
The subtle inference: "See? He isn't Good nor Love toward me!
Only toward others."

At first I thought it would pass. Just a set-back, only a season.
It's been too long now.
I know it's Winter in your deepest soul.
That Winter is expected, waited for . . . but worse . . .
called forth, demanded. Made up.

You are alive in Him. But you won't come out of the grave.
You do not smell the stench, nor see the
rotting grave clothes clinging.
You hold decay to your breast, call it a silken scarf.

Winter in the Lord of Seasons is only life resting before its
cataclysmic burst.
Winter, just one of four sumptuous times,
possesses its own barren beauty.
Life has crawled into hiding places, but one knows its power
can't be contained for long.

One hopes. 

Winter is a favor. Its fertile misery makes for the
seeking of God's warmth, prepares for grateful praise.

If you let it. 

I have told you of Spring. For an hour you lived there.
I have called you upward to blue sky.
But fascination with suffering flows in your blood.
Too deep, it overtakes, seeks more . . . .

I stiffen at the sound of your footsteps.
Your Clouds want to swallow my Sun.
I have to stand erect and fix my gaze on Light.
You want your Death-love to be contagious.
You want agreement that it will be Winter tomorrow
just because it is today.
Your unspoken question:
"What are you going to do about His carnage to me?"

You search in the snow until you find the trap,
then put your foot in . . . your pitiable snare
forces sympathetic tenderness.
So we too are caught!
It's manipulation, contrived and cunning.

I think I see . . . your need for love, so great
that attention is enough, no matter what you pay for it.
It passes for love.

I will not let you say what kind of love I give you.
One who as the Lord of Seasons never, never
needs the snare of pity.

Pity is a mockery slung in His generous Face. No!
I have no lamentation for you . . . except for your believing
that you need it.
The Liar laughs because he has you.

I will love you enough to hate your dark gloom.
And I won't sit in your cozy grave.
No! You must walk my garden.
See His lavish love in yellow tulips.

I will sing to you. No dirge, but the children's happy rhyme.
I will sing and hope you start to hum and wringing hands begin to clap.

Psalm 30:11,12 You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy
that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.

Copyright © 1985 Martha Kilpatrick