Letting Go of the Gloomies

This cold weather is wearing on me.

I have never liked winter in the first place. I don't like having to wear a coat everywhere, take it off when I get inside, and keep up with it until I put it back on to brave the chill. On my trek from the park to campus, my nose and my ears are frozen and I can feel my lips getting even more chapped every minute. I long for the days when I can throw on shorts and a t-shirt and just go outside. I want to run at the park with the sun beating on my back. I want to set up a hammock and spend the afternoon reading in the shade.

On Sunday, I was listening to a sermon by Tim Keller entitled "Discipline of Desire," in which he discussed Psalm 63 (one of my favorite passages). At one point in the sermon, he talked about how it seems like his relationship with God parallels the weather - it's easier to be close to God, for some reason, in the warmer weather and to let it get "cold" during the cold weather. He connected exactly with where I have felt lately.

I am grumpy in cold weather. I know this. It's almost always been this way - when I was little, my dad referred to it as the "gloomies," and he would tell me to sing praise songs to get rid of the gloomies. I never wanted to because I knew it would make me feel better and there is something about these gloomies - your focus is on yourself and there is something appealing about that, at least for a period of time. However, after awhile, it's no fun being sulky - but my dad was right. The only way to get out of the gloomies is to change the focus from self to God.

You would think that, during these gloomy times in our spiritual lives, we would want to return to God, since in Him is found fullness of joy and abundant life. However, sometimes I just get frustrated with His apparent absence. I don't know why He doesn't seem close anymore, and I don't like it but don't know always what to do about it.

In his sermon, Tim Keller said, "The sense of His absence is an evidence that He has touched you... My hatred of the absence of God is a sign of His presence." I know what it's like to have that close relationship with God, and therefore His seeming absence has that much stronger of an impression on me. But in order to change things, I have to get out of the gloomies, shifting my focus from myself to God.