Let it RAIN!

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. It is a place of great beauty and is so very very green. In fact, my birth state, Washington is know as the Evergreen State... do you want to know why? Because it rains all the time.

I know an entire list of jokes about the people who grow up there, such as "we don't tan, we rust" "we believe that umbrellas are for wimps" and on and on. I have more memories of walking to school in the drizzling rain, of dancing around mudpuddles (which my sister always made a point to stomp in!) and watching the rain run down the window. Believe it or not, it brings me comfort, and a sense of peace to have it rain.

Contrast that with my current environment. I honestly don't remember the last time it rained. I was looking out my bedroom window this morning at my poor dehydrated garden. My once lush green plants are now withered and tired, or all together dead. The grass, or what is left of it, is brown and dry. If you lie down on it, you are immediately covered in straw like remnants of what was once a very inviting lawn.

Now, I have to be honest. The weather itself is lovely. We are finished with the frightening cold winter, and spring has sprung. Our last week has given us temperatures in the 80's and 90's and our little pool has gone from a frigid 55 degrees up to a much more inviting 70 degrees. But everything is still so dry and dead. I'm longing for a good long soaking rain....

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger. ~Saint Basil

How many times in my life have I wondered why I struggle..why things don't go as smoothly as I picture them in my mind's eye? I look forward to the end of the struggle, the return to the "happy days", the "sunny days"?

Today a man in our church shared about some very difficult times his family is going through right now. But, even with the tears in his eyes for the sorrow he's experiencing, he admitted that he and his wife have grown closer to God in this time, and closer to each other, because of the struggle.

If we lived our entire lives on the "sunny side", we would be like those sad, brown plants in my garden - lifeless, droopy and lacking beauty. It's the rain that brings the life giving growth. It's the struggles that give us perspective, and growth both in our relationship with God and in our own personal character.

So, Lord, let it rain! Both on my thirsty garden, and my parched soul. Do not let me dry up and whither, but let me be "like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, whose leaf does not whither." (Psalm 1)