Winter is a beautiful time of year. Snow, frosted spiderwebs, Christmas trees and lights, gift-giving, and good food all lift the spirit through the cold months. While I look forward to spring, it’s usually not too hard to wait for it.

But recently, I researched the Pilgrims, the motley group of Separatists and Strangers who voyaged across the Atlantic on the Mayflower to start a new life, and their experiences with winter and spring completely changed my understanding of long-suffering and endurance.

The “new life” they planned to start was in New York by the Hudson Bay, near where other settlers had already come and begun the hard work of creating a colony. But winter storms blew them over 200 miles off course, making it impossible to make it to their original destination before the worst of winter came to the New World’s shores. They ended up dropping anchor off the shore of Massachusetts on November 9th, 1620. But they didn’t know the land, and there was no shelter standing ready to take them in. They were running low on food and fresh water, and it was bitterly cold. (I can attest to this from personal experience.) Less than half of that Separatist group left Holland, and more than half that did died before ever reaching the shores of the New World. How dreadful it must have been to wait months on a cramped, smelly, broken ship, with nothing to do but watch your family die and look out over the ocean on a shore you couldn’t get to till springtime!

These pilgrims gave up so much to venture to the New World. Their homes, friends, families, churches, personal space, money, possessions… They gave all this and more in faith that, as they walked His path, God would provide them with a land where they could both worship and share Him freely, according to their understanding of His word.

Yes, winter is a beautiful time of year. I love winter and all that comes with it. 

But this year, with my 20th birthday, my best friend’s wedding, my favorite holiday (Easter), and my own wedding coming in the spring, the temptation to want to find the ‘skip’ button for wintertime can sometimes feel overwhelming.

It’s been the longest, hardest winter I’ve lived through, with lots of snow, but no time to play in it and enjoy it because I’ve had to travel through it or work inside every time there’s been a good snow. 

There have also been other difficulties, such as sickness, on-the-road wedding planning, and learning more patience and grace than I thought possible.

While Satan tempts my flesh to faint for want of spring, I know that it is worth the wait. And when I start to slip, I remember His promises and His admonitions through Paul; “My strength is made perfect in your weakness;” “endure hardness;” “glory in tribulations [for] tribulation worketh patience, and patience, experience, and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed.”

I reckon, therefore, as Paul did, that “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” And in the doldrums of winter, I– and perhaps you, too– shall look to God for the stamina to press on till spring comes.