While Winter Still Lingers

 

I sit and watch the rainfall, the soft patter spilling against the ground outside my window. I imagine how beautiful it might sound if it had something to play upon instead of damp earth. Still, I listen.

With that rhythm, my mind drifts back to winter — to snowfall and laughter, to memories that coaxed my family out of their warm hiding places and into the cold. We played like children on a slippery slope, cascading downhill on sleds and coasters. I can still hear it — the laughter, the excitement — as if it’s happening just beyond the glass. Even my own voice returns to me, happy and content, right before I wiped out on my own sled.

I remember watching the sun climb, the world around me wrapped in diamond-dusted delicacy. The trees stood fractured with light, prisms sweeping across bare branches. The only sound I could hear was my own breathing — even the birds were silent. My camera could not capture what my eyes saw or what my soul felt. I would sit at the window, watching the sunrise, until the phone rang and I was asked if I wanted to go sledding.

I bundled up and stepped outside, pulled forward by the infectious laughter of a three-year-old with rosy cheeks and boundless joy. In that moment, the cold disappeared. Watching him in his elemental happiness, I sat down in the snow because I knew — this memory would never come again in quite the same way. His tiny footprints pressed into the snow reminded me just how small he is in such a big world. We laughed. We played for days. Even my daughter admitted that the weight she had been carrying felt lighter. In that space, the only thing that mattered was being together — because family carries a warmth all its own.

And then there was the sunset.

That magical sunset that allowed me to glimpse heaven from my own backyard.

I still cry when I feel the memory, because no sunset has ever been more precious to me. I didn’t just see it — I felt it. 

The earth is  warming, the rain settling in. Candlemas had passed, and soon the rain and warmth would melt the snow. But I wasn’t ready to let it go.

My Christmas lights still glow on the front porch. My nativity still echoes the final notes of the Christmas story. The candles may be extinguished, but my heart still belongs to winter — to its quiet peace, to sunrises and sunsets that can be felt from my kitchen window, where the hush of the season still lingers.

With a warm cup of coffee in hand, I don’t mind sitting by the window in stillness. I watch the birds, read a daily devotional, and pray — because this time is mine. Summer’s rush is not yet near. Warm weather will be welcome, but not just yet.

For now, I want to linger.

A little longer in my chair with a book.

A warm cup of tea.

Watercolors on paper spread across the table.

Before the fields call me back to work.

I want to sleep beneath an extra blanket on a winter afternoon and dream of the life still unfolding ahead of me. Winter — evoking stillness in all its quiet glory — until the scent of raw spring earth rises, and this moment becomes only a memory.

and when spring finally comes, I will remember that winter once asked me to stay

-and I did