Where I live, February can be brutal and miserably long. Days are short, temperatures are cold and the sky seems permanently overcast. The snow, which was clean, white and refreshing around Christmastime, has become gray with road salt and has solidified into hardened piles of ice. Roads are pocked with potholes, people are stir-crazy from being indoors too long, and there is an overall feeling of depression and gloom. Not many people around here like February.

The irony is that the miserable Februaries are why this part of the world is so pleasant. It is the long, cold winter that controls the number of bugs and other vermin. It is the large buildup of snow and ice, released together in the spring thaw, that provides a well-watered climate for hardwood trees, flowers and agriculture. It is the difficulty of socializing in winter that shapes a culture to value deep friendships over passing acquaintances, that leads us truly to appreciate the mild weather of the other seasons of the year. We may not appreciate February while we are in the middle of experiencing it, but it is a wonderful gift that blesses us and makes us who we are.

In the same way, we as human beings pass through “February” periods in our lives, times and situations which are painful, even agonizing, but which are in fact blessings. We may not feel blessed at the time – we are usually too focused on trying to endure the experience – but it is the very pain and depression and misery that provides us with the raw materials we need to become better human beings. It is when we are broken that we are able to evaluate the individual pieces of our lives. It is in our loneliness that we learn compassion. It is by experiencing poverty that we may discover the hollowness of earthly possessions. It is in walking with death that we find what it is to be alive.

It is a foolish vanity of our current civilization that we go to great lengths to try to avoid pain and sorrow. We strive to be happy at all times. This behavior is both useless and self-destructive. It is useless because joy and sorrow are fundamentally intertwined and cannot be separated. It is self-destructive because it leads us to deny or to try to escape painful situations without ever learning from them. We therefore keep finding ourselves back in that painful place over and over because we have refused to experience it deeply enough to understand our own roles in creating and maintaining it.

The only sensible, healthy response to sorrow is to face it fully, to go into the pit of despair and experience it directly. Yes, this is painful, but it is the pain of healing; it is the pain of re-creation. In our pain, we are able to sift through our priorities and our values to discover higher truths than we had previously known. In our pain, we face the hard realization that we do in fact need other people to be whole. In our pain, we touch the presence of the Spirit of All, who breaks us down through our hardships so that we may be created anew.

To seek joy without sorrow is like a plant that seeks only bright, sunny days. Not only will the full range of weather conditions come whether we will it or not, but it is the gloomy, rainy days that provide us with the water we need to grow and survive. It is the cold of winter that clears away the distracting bugs that sap our strength. Too many sunny days in a row is called a drought. Too much happiness without the soul-nourishing waters of sorrow leads to spiritual withering and lifelessness. We need to drink deeply of our sorrow to be able to thrive when the sunshine arrives. It is our Februaries that open the doorway to spring.

“It’s impossible for me to see failure.

Everything that happens,

I reinterpret it as an opportunity

for a miracle – beyond my pay grade!”

Only you can understand by living what you are living, and by being in the place you are living right now, what your purpose is. Therefore, other people are not in the best position to determine right action. What may seem ill-advised may be appropriate, because your journey requires it at this time.

Our journeys are made up of many stories. Mistakes turn into miracles and failures become lessons. All that’s required is a heart open to the abundant life.