Dream Catcher 3:20

Winter on a ranch can mess with your head.

The trees are stark and bony.

The grass crunches instead of sways.

The world looks like it exhaled and forgot to inhale again.

You can drive a fence line in January and swear the land is done for. Color disappears. Life tucks itself away. Even the wind feels thin and tired. If you did not know better, you would call it dead.

But ranch folks learn this the hard, holy way:

Winter is not death. Winter is necessary.

Roots go deeper when the top looks gone.

Moisture gathers.

Strength is being built where no one can see.

There is a verse that sounds like it was written with frozen pastures in mind:

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1 (KJV)

A time for green and a time for brown.

A time for singing and a time for silence.

A time for blooming and a time for seemingly nothing at all.

And then there is this picture I cannot shake, and maybe you have lived it too.

A sick calf.

You have that knot in your stomach because it does not look good. It is weak, not standing right, eyes dull. You pour yourself into it anyway. You warm it. You doctor it. You pray over it, because yes, ranchers absolutely pray over calves.

And honestly, some days you do not think it will make it.

Then one cold morning you walk back out there, half braced for bad news, and that little thing is up on shaky legs, bawling mad because it is hungry.

You laugh. Maybe cry. Maybe both.

Because what you thought was over was not.

The Bible says it like this:

“For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again… through the scent of water it will bud.”

Job 14:7–9 (KJV)

Hope at the scent of water. Not even the downpour. Just the hint of it.

Tell me that does not sound like dreams.

We carry dreams that go into winter seasons.

Plans stall. Doors close. Energy drains.

What once felt alive now feels frostbitten and quiet.

Our first reaction is to panic and declare it finished.

But winter is not God abandoning you.

Winter is God preparing you.

He uses stillness to heal burnout.

He uses waiting to strengthen roots.

He uses the season where nothing seems to be happening to build the version of you who can actually carry what you asked Him for.

Sometimes He even lets you think the dream is gone so you will recognize how miraculous it is when it rises.

Just like that calf.

Just like those pastures that brown up in December and burst back in April like they have been planning a surprise party the whole time.

So if your life looks winter bare right now, if your heart feels quiet, your dream looks sickly, or your hope feels thin, do not write your story’s obituary.

Doctor the calf anyway.

Pray anyway.

Show up anyway.

Trust the One who knows seasons better than we do.

Spring always looks impossible right up until it is not.

God has not forgotten you.

And what looks dead may simply be resting until the right sun hits it.

Eph 3:20

Cassie Gilman