Finding Beauty in the Winter Season
Photo credit: Ivan Miranda
February 2026
If you’re living on the East Coast like me and feeling done with winter, you’re not alone. After several weeks of bitter cold, salt all over our cars, and months of bare trees, it’s easy to grow weary. The snow that doesn’t melt can feel like the conflicts or sufferings in our lives that linger longer than we can bear sometimes. It can feel like nothing is changing—like spring is taking “forever” to arrive.
In each of my monthly Be Better newsletters, I like to personally create and offer a free lockscreen wallpaper for women to find encouragement throughout the month on a particular theme. At the start of this month, I found myself wanting to encourage all of us to keep looking toward spring. My first idea was to create a lockscreen image of a snowy winter scene that transitioned into a spring flower—something symbolic, something hopeful.
Then I came across a photograph taken by a friend of mine: two women walking together through fresh snow. I stopped immediately. This was the truth God has shown me again and again in my own times of darkness, waiting, and long “winter” seasons of life:
He is here in the cold.
He is here in the waiting.
And beauty is not only something ahead of us—it’s something present with us.
The image of those two women embodied exactly what I believe the Lord wants us to know right now. We don’t have to rush through this season to get to the next one. We don’t have to anxiously look for spring to save us. There is beauty right here, even when the landscape feels barren, even when the days feel long, even when the snow shows no sign of melting.
God is in the slow.
God is in the bitter cold.
God is in the “not yet.”
And because he is here, our waiting is not empty. It’s hope-filled.
So I asked my friend if I could use the image—and he graciously said yes. I’m grateful, because this photo expresses something deeper than any AI-generated scene ever could. It shows real women, in real winter, living real life… together. And I happen to know that these particular women, let me tell you, have had their seasons of winter to pull through. And they did—with tremendous, inspiring faith.
Let us be reminded that in seasons of heaviness, God isn’t asking us to fast‑forward to springtime. He invites us to walk with Him in the present moment, to embrace the beauty that’s already here, even in the places that feel less than desirable.
Yes, spring is coming—the days are getting longer, and light always returns. But until then, I pray that we all learn to see the quiet treasures God hides in winter: friendship, stillness, reflection, perseverance, the comfort of someone walking beside us. There is beauty here. He is here. And that is enough.
He has made everything beautiful in its time.
~ Ecclesiastes 3:11
Here’s a gift to keep you uplifted during winter.
This month’s free lockscreen wallpaper, offered in my February Be Better newsletter, features the beautiful photo of the two women walking in the snow—may it remind you that even in the coldest seasons, God is present and beauty is quietly unfolding. Feel free to read the newsletter, or download the wallpaper here.
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