When It Feels Like Winter Will Never End

There's a line in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that has stayed with me since the first time I heard it:

"It is always winter, but never Christmas."

I don't think I have really delved into what that means before. The weight of that. Let yourself imagine a truly endless winter. No spring in sight. A landscape locked in cold. Air that never warms. Days that never quite brighten. A world that doesn't move forward — only circles endlessly in frost.

It's the kind of winter that seeps not only into the land, but into the heart.

And lately, I've been living in a season that feels exactly like that.

The Winter I Didn't Choose

There are moments in life where everything warm seems to slip through your fingers — relationships fall apart, once stable jobs are upended, the future turns vague, the sense of stability gets shaken. You pray for clarity, for resolution, for healing, for change… but the silence stretches. You keep waiting for the thaw, and none comes.

Right now, it feels like winter has settled into the deepest places of my life.

A month has passed, and the ache of missing someone I care deeply about hasn't dulled. The questions haven't answered themselves. The path hasn't clarified. I feel stuck, suspended, watching my breath in the cold.

And if I'm honest, I've caught myself fearing what the Narnians feared:

What if winter simply stays? What if the story never reaches Christmas?

It's a real fear — the fear that nothing changes, that joy doesn't return, that hope is something for other people's stories. My story? I think to myself, "Oh I never get the happy ending."

Yet, oh how wrong I am!

The Christian story, like Narnia, insists on something more.

The Church Calendar and the Wisdom of Seasons

Recently, I have been learning more about the church calendar. It is not something that I grew up with. Yet I am lately fascinated by the pictures presented in this tradition.

What I love about the church calendar is that it refuses to pretend life is one constant emotional season. Instead, it acknowledges something Scripture shows again and again:

God works through seasons.

• Advent is longing.
• Christmas is joy.
• Lent is repentance.
• Easter is resurrection.
• Ordinary Time is steady, faithful growth.

The calendar begins not with celebration, but with waiting — a waiting that aches, that hopes, that looks out the window at a dark sky and whispers, "Come, Lord Jesus."

Advent tells us something essential:

Waiting is not a mistake. Waiting is a season God Himself steps into. (Still preaching to myself this truth).

Sometimes life mirrors Advent. Sometimes we walk through months — or years — where we long for a miracle we can't produce, for a future we can't control, for a reconciliation or healing we can't guarantee. We stand in a winter where we don't get to see the end of the story yet.

And yet God meets us in winter.

He does not demand that we pretend to be in spring.

"Always Winter, Never Christmas" — Why Lewis Chose That Image

Lewis understood something about the soul. Winter carries a symbolism that goes beyond temperature:

• It is the season of stalled growth.
• The season where the world feels quiet and empty.
• The season where we have no visible signs that anything good is happening beneath the surface.

When Lewis wrote that Narnia was "always winter and never Christmas," he wasn't just describing a climate; he was describing despair.

But the point of that line in the story is not the bleakness — it's the promise built into it.

Because if there is a winter that never ends, then the first sign of thaw is a miracle.

And in Narnia, the thaw doesn't come because the children tried harder. It doesn't come because the creatures mustered enough optimism. It comes because Aslan is on the move.

Lewis packs that moment with theology:

hope does not begin in us — it arrives from outside us.

The God Who Steps Into Winter

In Christianity, the "thaw" is not an idea. It is a Person.

The promise of the gospel is not that we will never experience winter, but that winter is never the final season.

• Christ breaks into the cold world.
• Christ brings the first hints of warmth and light.
• Christ begins to undo the long freeze.

Sometimes the thaw is slow. Sometimes it comes in ways you didn't expect. Sometimes it transforms you long before it transforms your circumstances. This is the hope we can cling to.

But wherever Christ walks, winter loses its power.

This is where the church calendar points us again:

We live in Advent — waiting — but a Christmas is coming.

We walk through Lent — dying — but an Easter is promised.

We endure winters — long ones — but spring belongs to God.

My Own Winter, and the Hope I Keep Reaching Toward

So this is where I am right now: in a winter I never asked for.

I'm in a season where I miss someone deeply and don't see a clear path back together. A season where I wish circumstances were different — where I wish things could resolve, could warm, could come to Christmas again. A season where I pray, I hope, and I wait, and still the snow doesn't melt.

And yet — I am worshiping a God who works in winter.

A God who has a long history of doing His best work in the cold:

• Abraham waited decades with nothing but frost on the horizon.
• Israel waited generations in silence.
• The disciples waited three days between the worst winter imaginable and the greatest sunrise in history.
• In fact almost every Biblical narrative I can think of involves periods of long waiting. Think of one yourself… Jacob, Joseph, David?

And in all of it, God was moving. Quietly. Faithfully. Unseen like roots beneath frozen ground — alive even when nothing appeared to grow.

So I am learning to wait in hope.

Not a hope that guarantees my personal story will turn out the way I want.

Not a hope that promises a relationship will be restored on my timetable.

But a hope anchored in something deeper:

Winter does not last forever because Christ is on the move.

If He doesn't bring the spring I long for, He will bring a spring I didn't know to ask for.

If He doesn't give back what I miss, He will give something that still leads me to joy.

If He leads me through this season instead of out of it, He will walk with me through every cold step.

The Promise I'm Holding On To

When winter feels endless, it is easy to believe that nothing will ever change.

But the Christian story — the true story — says otherwise.

Winter is not eternal.

Christmas has already begun.

And spring is guaranteed.

We may not see it yet.

We may not feel it yet.

But the One who breaks winter has already entered the world, and He has promised to finish what He began.

So if you're in a cold, silent season like I am, take heart:

• Winter is real — but temporary.
• Waiting is painful — but meaningful.
• Hope is fragile — but alive.

And someday, whether in this life or in the one to come, the Lion will shake His mane, and the long winter will melt.

And we will feel the warmth again.

Lastly, read this prophecy from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,

When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,

And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again

I am going to let this be my liturgy for this season.

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Reflection Questions

1. What "winter" are you currently enduring? What does the cold feel like in your life right now?

2. Where do you see evidence of God's presence, even in the cold? Is there any sign of the thaw, however small?

3. What would it look like to trust God in the winter, not just after it?

4. How might God be forming you in this season in ways that wouldn't happen in the warmth?

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If this resonates with you, I'd love to hear your story. How are you navigating your own season of winter? What helps you hold onto hope when it feels like spring will never come?