Monday’s post about choosing joy in the rain was barely posted when I had the opportunity to live it. That’s the way it works, isn’t it? It’s like telling God you’d like to be a more patient person — and then ::wham!:: many opportunities to practice patience appear before your eyes.
April went out with a monsoon, inside and outside. Outside, a diluvial sheet of water bent and twisted and contorted, darkening the sky, punctuated with electric bursts of thunder. Inside, an email quietly said no to something we all had hoped for.
Inside, outside, inside, outside.
It wasn’t until after the Flood that hope arrived. It wasn’t until everything drowned and the rains stopped and the earth heaved under the weight of the water that the rainbow appeared. It wasn’t until then that the olive branch soared across the horizon and into view.
“Now let the music keep
our spirits high
And let the buildings keep
our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets
by and by, by and by
When the light that’s lost within us
reaches the sky
…And when the sand was gone
and the time arrived…
And in attempts to understand a thing
so simple and so huge
believed that they were meant to live
after the deluge.” -Jackson Browne
It’s 2 am, and I’m awakened to the sound of a sobbing little girl and heavy raindrops beating against the side of the building. She is teething, the rain’s falling from the swirling fingers of a tropical storm, and my head is tired and groggy. I lie still for several minutes, as if by remaining motionless I could somehow will her back to sleep. She shifts from quiet crying to calling out “Mummy!” and in a moment, we are both in her room. She’s upright in her crib, stumbling around half-asleep and half-awake as though the mattress were a ship deck, rolling on the high seas to the sound of the pelting rain.
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