Welcome, Rain

 It had been two solid weeks of nothing but rain, with little breaks in between. 

Unseasonably so. 

At a time of the summer that is usually some of our best weather, the drops just kept falling and falling... day after day. Almost like the skies were mourning some unknown thing the rest of us were oblivious to. It felt so gray. So dark. The earth itself began to struggle to hold that much water as meteorologists on local tv kept telling us the rain-inch tally was going up rapidly and we weren't forecasted to come out of it anytime soon. Rivers and creeks kept rising, their banks barely keeping the current within. It felt so opposite to what we hold out for all winter long. Even though Alaska does get quite a bit of rain every summer, a late Spring this year had us all longing for some warmth and sunshine. Two straight weeks of a pouring torrent wasn't exactly on our wish list. 

But then I began to think... 

Some seasons of life feel like this, too. They're unwanted. They feel unseasonable - as if they don't belong in our otherwise good lives. We want to dream them away because we miss the clear skies of comfort and prosperity. The darkness seems unnatural, and all we hope is for the tears and the pain to stop... as soon as possible. But when the soul-rains keep on coming and it feels like the banks of our heart just can't continue to hold in all the grief and the ache, there looks to be no sign of it letting up. And we struggle. We wrestle to accept that this can go on like this because we feel we've reached the end of what we can endure. 

Why won't this go away?

Reports popped up on the local news of towns counting their flood resources in case these rains continued as concerned residents wondered if the waters nearby would recede or spill over the riverbanks and devastate the community. People anxiously planned for how to proceed should the worst happen. Thankfully, the rains stopped in time and damage was minimal but the fears were real... and so they are with us in our hard seasons, too. We put our self-protective measures in place but, when those start to fail, we question if our foundation will hold. Will we be able to survive this massive thing, and how long, O Lord, will this last? 

Then it hits me: you can either view your internal rains as a sign of grief and Divine unfairness, or you can see them as holding the possibility of something new. After all, ancient Hebrew tradition and biblical writ consider rain as a sign of cleaning and blessing. When the storms hit your life and threaten to take out everything you've held dear along with them, what if you could see them as a beginning to something new? What if the tears you've cried and endless darkness you've trod allowed you, for maybe the first time, to behold the face of God? What if the floods opened up for you a new start you would've never discovered otherwise and the stuff that gave way was actually never meant to hold you anyway? 

Perhaps in the flooding and the raining and the shedding of whatever we've previously built our lives around comes an invitation into a fresh chapter where the things that fell away and washed out in the storms, the hurt and the fear we've had to face, the darkness we've been asked to navigate has birthed a version of ourselves, a perspective on life, a deeper faith, maybe unexpected connections or opportunities that only came to be because something else collapsed. Maybe the storms were sent our way with a hidden and strange purpose in mind we can only find in the aftermath of the devastation. However unwanted the rains have been, they could be the exact thing we most needed and the great Author somehow knew best. 

The sun has returned following these rainy weeks and I'm noticing all of the greened-up lawns, the pop of the color of the wildflowers, the freshness of the air - things that could only come about through some rainfall. They say that into every life some of these droplets must come and I wonder what might happen if we didn't fight them so much. What if we, instead, welcomed the rain... what if we leaned into the storms and asked them what they make possible instead of wishing the sun back so fast... what if we remembered that we cannot have a complete life without both and that yes, even the rains also serve their holy purpose.