The older I get, I find the more interested I am in the weather forecast.  Especially in Spring, when I start planning what I need to do out in my yard, or even the basic timing of when to take my car through the car wash, all have me eyeing when the rain is coming.  

When I was growing up, I used to laugh at older folks.  So much interest in the weather… You couldn’t go into a grocery store or a bank and have it not be brought up.  “It’s a hot one, huh?”  Or “They’re saying it will be here by Thursday, and we’re gonna get an inch or two.”  Funny how things come full circle.  

Rain is indeed a powerful force.  We don’t realize how much so, until we either have too much or too little of it.  In the Bible, rain meant bounty and crops and harvest and blessings.  It could also be the signal of doom, as in the days of Noah, when God punished the land for their sins and caused it to rain for forty days and forty nights.  

We can’t control it, but we wonder about it a lot.  Symbolically, metaphorically, spiritually… we wonder when it falls on certain days or events, if the angels are weeping for joy or in solidarity with our sorrow.  As if they somehow know… I believe they do. 

Sometimes, it feels like it is raining within us.  Despite the sunshine on the outside world, we feel hunkered down, wrapped in our circumstances, protecting our hearts from the flood of emotions that are often just this close from breaking out.  We keep our eyes on the proverbal clouds - people, triggers, situations - that can trip us up and land us in that vulnerable place of losing it.  And so, we put on our galoshes and our rain slicks and go about life so that we don’t get wet.  

I find myself here… Busy, occupied, doing what I need to do, taking care of those still in my charge, doing all the right things… I feel conflicted, afraid to let down my guard.  What if the dam breaks and I cannot stop it?  What if I let myself be open to new relationships, and the ill wind of betrayal comes and knocks me down again?  What if… I put myself out there, and I am not enough?

It’s hard emerging back into life when we have been in a storm.

One thing that I know about God, about life, is that we need both the rain and the sun.  We need to be planted in a place, our circumstances sown right along with us, so that we can grow and change and come though the soil of hurt and difficulties, the sunshine drawing us out and upward.  We need to trust that in our hunkered down state, God is doing things within us that are needed, so that when we burst forth, we will be ready for what comes next.

Rain is a sign of new life.

I wonder, if you are like me, if you don’t get bogged down in fear, too covered up to think about sprouting again.  I wonder if you have your eyes too much on the clouds, thinking that the storm you have been through, is either still lingering or is bringing more harm your way.  I wonder… if it hurts too much to hope that what has devastated you, has only watered your soil so that you can once again spring forth and bloom. 

I know you are looking for the sun, wanting to believe for better days.  I know the tendency to get stuck in the muck of hard times that you could neither anticipate or imagine.  I understand that there are hurricanes with names we still find hard to believe could be so damaging to us.  But they come and they go, and the sun always comes up again.

Without the rain, we cannot grow.  We would wither on the vine of complacency.  Sunshine everyday would be boring. Soon, would come drought, and a hardness of spirit that would leave us desperate for relief. 

We can’t live without both.

Keep your eye on the horizon… I know that rain is coming.  Don’t be afraid to go outside, to welcome it, to splash around and loosen up and see what God is bringing with it.  I know how hard it is sometimes to believe that new life awaits.  But it does.  It always does.  

God has a purpose for all that He does.  Somethings are just hard to predict.

But when we walk in Faith, when we keep our eyes on Him, we can know one thing for certain.

The forecast is always good.  

Put your umbrella down and bloom, girl.  Bloom.