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Chilling Time

ByKelly Keller

Last month, I don’t mind telling you, I turned forty-eight years old. While the whole world shouts at me that I should be embarrassed to say how old I am, I will continue to say the number out loud. It is good to grow older, and I am thankful to do so. I hope I am wiser than I once was. I have more gray streaks in my hair, and I’ve resisted the urge to go get them covered up. I find myself firmly in the “let’s make it normal—and even good!—to age” camp.

The past decade of my life has seen the most drastic change in my lifetime. The death of both of my parents in two years, the pandemic, and the aging of my children: these would all be significant things to wrestle through on their own. I encountered them all at once, within the span of five years. It has been shocking. Add in some pretty serious hormonal shifts (yes, I am in That Algorithm on social media), and I have felt far adrift from who I used to be.

In some ways, outgrowing who I used to be is a good thing. It is the normal way of things to catch yourself up in life circumstances that press hard on you and force changes. At the same time, and on other days, it is harrowing and disorienting, and it is hard to get out of bed in the morning.

Richard Wilbur’s poem “Orchard Trees, January” paints a picture of an orchard undergoing a fierce snowstorm. He chides the reader for thinking that such trees are “snug beneath their pelted bark.” Rather, he says,

They take affliction in until it jells

To crystal ice between their frozen cells...

The snow and wind are affecting the trees, though we don’t see it happening. Though they appear to be shut down against the weather, snug and warm, the truth is that they are taking it in. They stand open to the affliction, allowing it to penetrate them and make them into what they will be:

And each of them is inwardly a vault

Of jewels rigorous and free of fault,

Unglimpsed until in May it gently bears

A sudden crop of green-pronged solitaires.

Wilbur is here referencing the truth that apple trees need “chill hours,” a specific length of time during which they must endure cold temperatures. If the tree does not experience enough cold, it will not produce leaves or flowers, and therefore no fruit.

If these past few years haven’t been a chilling season for me, I’m not sure what would qualify.

I have returned to the passage in Romans 5 more than once, where Paul reminds his readers that “affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope” (v. 3-4) The context around this passage is the Gospel, plain and simple. We have hope because we are justified and have peace with God; we hope in the glory of God.

But then, because he knows the truth personally, Paul goes on—” AND NOT ONLY THAT,” he seems to yell, not letting the readers leave it there—we can also boast in our sufferings. Paul knows that the Gospel has ramifications beyond the eternal—that God is present in our circumstances, remaking us inwardly. And frequently, the good Lord does this with the presence of suffering.

Dear Lord, isn’t there any other way I can develop proven character? Can’t my hope instead remain a theoretical thing, couched in comfort and pretty words? Instead, I am plodding along, putting one foot in front of the other, and feeling my way in the dark. This is the way of things.

I am determined to view this as a season, but there are some ways in which this is how life is now. My parents will not be returning to my earthly life. My children will not be little again. There are both things to mourn and things to celebrate. Each day has some of each, if we’re looking.

One gardening extension website describes the emergence from the chilling hours as follows: “Growing-degree days accrue just like chilling hours and eventually lead to bud break once enough heat is accumulated.” Just as the cold is inevitable, so too is the warmth. It just takes time to collect.

It seems, then, that midlife may be the season for me when I finally welcome this as normal: seasons of chill and seasons of heat. Seasons of dormancy and seasons of bud break. To be sure, there has been plenty of “hunkering down,” as I think is appropriate. After all, the tree isn’t fruiting as it stands in the storm. “Dormant-season” people, those who are enduring the cold, need patient care from others: kindness, willingness to listen, and prayer.

As the seasons transpire, for now I have resolved to stand in the snow, feeling the fullness of the penetrating cold and snow— ”taking it in,” as Wilbur says of his orchard trees—awaiting the green.

The above essay was originally published in the Story Warren Weekly newsletter. If you’re not subscribed, you can do so right here. You’ll get a free gift just for signing up!

Kelly Keller
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