SAD: the pain of winter

One of the mental health discoveries of recent times is seasonal affective disorder. A significant number of people in higher latitudes, it seems, suffer from some level of depression, or SAD, when winter sets in.

SAD may in fact be a byproduct of our increasingly technological environment. In a society that has learned to control climate and light, the ancient rhythms of the seasons disappear. Humans have lived with seasons since the beginning of time. But, no longer. Practically speaking, we’ve come to assume we should live in temperate summer all year round.

Most of us have lost our tolerance for changes in temperature or daylight. A rise or fall of two degrees makes us sweat or shiver. Until the advent of cheap and effective lighting, most people were resigned to the fact that life is 50 percent night. Today the only darkness we experience is when we want to sleep.

When we live as if seasons are not part of life, it’s no wonder the onset of winter brings on depression. As the days shorten and the temperature falls we’re reminded that our existence is confined to human cocoons. Our world shrinks; we’re left stewing helplessly, betrayed by our illusions.

The antidote, apparently, is full-spectrum lighting for those of modest means and respites in sunny climes for the affluent.

While we may have conquered the weather and the night, we haven’t eliminated the seasons of life – and this may be the root of an even deeper SAD. Life has all manner of seasons. Alongside the seasons of joy, companionship, and celebration, are seasons of sadness, betrayal, disappointment, and pain. Stretched over these are the seasons of infancy, youth, middle age, and old age. These seasons will never be conquered by flipping a switch.

Eliminating seasons is not the biblical way, in any case. The Bible speaks not of homogenizing the seasons, but of living appropriately in them. “Be patient. . . . See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains” (James 5:7).

Jesus’ parables are full of seasons – seasons of planting, seasons of weeding, and of course, the harvest season when workers go out rejoicing. “Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest” (John 4:35). These are the seasons we live for; they engage us as active workers. We feel important when we scatter the seed, ecstatic when we reap the harvest. Even when tending the field and pulling weeds, we have opportunity to stand back with satisfaction as the crop rises from the ground before our eyes.

But it’s not always springtime, harvest, or even summer. And this comes as a painful shock to those who have lost the sense of life’s seasons, especially to those of us looking for spiritual crops to harvest.

It’s particularly painful during seasons of winter and drought. Unless we understand that it’s winter, we find ourselves trudging across cold, muddy fields quixotically swinging our sickle through dead stalks.

Ultimately it’s winter that causes us the deepest pain. It resists every effort towards productivity, every purpose driven action in our spiritual tool kit.

But did God create the winter? Indeed he did. It too is one of his seasons, as any farmer knows. Life demands dormancy. Even the story of redemption has its winter. “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed” (John 12:24).

We should prepare for winter, as we do for any season. Paul knew about the seasons and he knew when winter was approaching. Knowing this, he prepared himself. He wrote Timothy, “when you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments. . . . Do your best to get here before winter” (2 Timothy 4:13, 21). Paul was stocking up, both literally and spiritually, for the season of winter.

Spring will come, with its fresh soil ready to receive the seed. Summer too, with its crops that need tending. And finally there will be the harvest, with its feasts and celebrations. But these seasons are seen only by those who go through winter, by those who prepare for it and receive the invisible rest and renewal of seasonal dormancy.

James Toews is pastor at Neighbourhood Church, Nanaimo, B.C.