Circle of Hope

As I approach my second year as a Philadelphian, I’ve begun to realize that winter here is nothing like the winters back in the woods of North Central Pennsylvania that I once called home. In fact, at times it doesn’t seem like a winter at all.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s cold. The people in this city do not keep their homes warm. In the beginning, I just thought that my landlord was a penny-pinching masochist. In the rare instances that we weren’t curled up in bed, we could see our breath freeze. Then I moved to South Philly and I realized that people in this city don’t prefer being half-frozen; most just can’t afford to heat their homes well due to a combination of poor insulation and ridiculous oil prices.

Then there’s the snow. More so, the lack of it. I’m not going to claim that I know anything about global warming, or anything like that, but in the two winters I’ve experienced here, I’ve been left wondering where on earth the snow went. This is still Pennsylvania, after all. And when the snow does come, it takes all of fifteen minutes for it to become a disgusting nuisance. People don’t know how to drive in it, even the widest roads are poorly plowed, cyclists basically risk their lives daily, and every day where one has walked down the sidewalk without major injury is cause for celebration.

Those who know me probably know that I see the benefits and joys of living in this city as far outweighing the pleasures of having the sort of winter I’d prefer. To be honest, I’d endure six months a year of this crappy winter just to live here. But I can’t help miss the quiet way that blankets of snow surrounded my house and the woods surrounding it. Aesthetics aside, it felt safe and quiet, lonely but beautiful in its starkness. Sure, you can do things in the city. There is art to enjoy, there are friends to love, and there are even people in need whom I care about. But the winter is outside, and it is ugly and keeps me in.

For a long time, I saw my depression in the same way that I think about those winters back home. Isolating, alone, cold, dead… but beautiful somehow. In the times that it would come and envelop me in its icy grasp, I would let go without a fight. The place I went, though vastly inferior to summer, was safe. But summer was coming less and less. It got to a point where I was sleeping fifteen hours a day, and still waking up feeling listless and hopeless. Finding a home and an identity in being sad and alone was a pretty bad state to be in. But it’s such an easy place to be comfortable. In a society torn between self-loathing and self-worship, the former seemed (and still sometimes does seem) morally superior, even austere.

And then Jesus came and stirred everything up. That’s always the way he seems to work. Whenever I get comfortable in something, whether it’s a good or bad something, he always busts in and rattles me all around. I suppose that’s the way I change and grow, but I’m not going to lie, I still hate it. Anyway, situation after situation brought me to the conclusion that the place I was in wasn’t that great. Here I was, wallowing the winter of my depression, when it was just as disgusting as the ash-crusted gray piles of snow in the Target parking lot. But I never would have seen it if I hadn’t been thrust into a community that showed me the two things I was missing the most: love from others, and a way to love back. The only way I could enjoy those things? Force myself out into the cold of winter and experience them, even if it was uncomfortable.

I’m no psychologist. This is my metaphor, and maybe it won’t work for anybody else. But here on the verge of Lent I can’t help but think about what this coming season means to me. I’ve been thinking for weeks about things that I should “give up” for the season. But I realize that maybe it’s not the giving up that has ever gotten me anywhere, but instead the “taking on.” New relationships, new habits, and, most importantly, a renewed relationship and connection with Jesus Christ; with these things in my life, the things that I would “give up” are slowly pushed away.