Flourishing in winter

Although it is summer here, I am thinking about winter, because for me, Christmas happens in winter. My northern hemisphere upbringing has imprinted a cold, dark season on me for this time of year.  So when I came across this photo in an old calendar it made me think about winter and how to flourish in  that season.

When the weather is cold, the ground is hard, and there's not much food around, how do you flourish? What does flourishing even look like in winter? It is hard to tell, with deciduous trees, whether they are surviving or not. It isn't really until the spring that you can see whether they are still alive.

One way to stack the odds to keep yourself going through a cold, hard winter is to squirrel stuff away when it is plentiful. Journalling is one way to store up the things you can live off when times are lean. Remembering how you made it through a previous hard time, looking at the promises for the future, and staying rooted in the Word even when it is hard and you feel wrapped in silence .