Tonight I was driving home from dinner at my parents’ house when a song came on my church music Pandora station. It is called Blessings by Laura Story. The first line of the chorus says, “‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops…” It reminded me of a meme my mom sent me a few days ago that said something to the effect of not all rainstorms come to disrupt our lives, sometimes they come to clear our path. My thoughts continued to follow these ideas.
I live in Utah. Utah is an amazing, beautiful place. We have green canyons with lakes. We have incredible red rock areas and cool formations. We live in valleys at the foot of large mountains. I love it here. But, I don’t love January, February or March. During these months the air gets really bad. This is called an inversion – the dirty, polluted air gets trapped in the bowl of the valley surrounded by mountains. It is really gross. Sometimes when I am driving around during these months I feel like I am in a dystopian novel, it seems almost surreal.
During these months, the air is so bad that there are warnings about who should stay inside, kids can’t go out to recess sometimes and we are told to carpool. But then the weather would change. Snowstorms and rainstorms are exciting during this time because when they blow in and then back out they leave the air cleaner! The weather maps show green air quality instead of the horrible red. It is so amazing to see the change. And it is so refreshing.
So, could this be like our lives? Maybe sometimes things get so polluted, so dirty, so gross that our lives need to be cleansed. It could be from choices we make. Or it could be from choices others make that affect us. And even though we call it a storm, it is really cleansing. And when the storm passes we are refreshed, the bad cleaned out, and we are ready to move on.
Now, I don’t think that a family breaking up (or someone dying, or any other trial or hardship we go through) is a preferable course in our lives. The ideal would be for there to never be hard things, right? But there are. People make decisions that end a marriage. People get sick and die. Jobs are lost, friendships broken, and a multitude of other circumstances. In those moments we have two choices – we can turn toward God or away. And that decision will make the difference between sitting bitterly in a puddle in the pouring rain or letting the rain cleanse us. I was thinking today how I feel so happy (not all the time, mind you, but in general) and hopeful for the future. I feel confident in my decisions and actions and I feel like my life is cleaned and ready for a bright future. Maybe that is why these words stuck out to me today, because of how I am feeling.
As my mind moved through rain analogies I thought of another time in my life. Four months after I married my ex-husband we moved to Portland, Oregon for him to start graduate school. The pacific northwest is known for being rainy. Because of that you just have to keep living your life, rain or not. At first I used to stay in if it was rainy and tell myself I would run my errands or do whatever needed to be done when it stopped raining. Well, I learned quickly that life still had to be lived – I just needed to get out even if I got a little wet. In my life now I am learning that even though I feel like I have been in the middle of a rainstorm, I still need to live. I still need to feel. I still can find so much good and happiness and fun in life. So, I’m not letting myself wait until the storm has passed to get on with my life. And really, I find that this is helping the clouds clear, metaphorically speaking.
Soon after we arrived in Oregon I became pregnant. I took temporary jobs to bide my time until my son was born. During this period there were thirty two straight days of rain. It was a bit depressing, I’ll admit. I remember one day I was at work and it was actually sunny. At lunch that day I purposely sat at a table in the sun because I was so excited that it wasn’t raining and I wanted to be in the warm light. Someone was getting up to leave and asked if I wanted their spot in the shade. I said, “NO!” I wanted to enjoy the sun after such a long spell of rain. And that is like our lives. No matter how long the storm lasts, the sun comes back out. Good times can be found. Healing and peace follow if we turn to God. He is there always and will bask our lives in bright sun after we make it through the struggles in our lives. We can even see it peek through the storm clouds in the middle of those struggles.
So, let it rain sometimes. It will rain whether or not we accept it. If we let them, the experiences we have during the hardest times in our lives can cleanse us and prepare us for and even brighter future than we can imagine. I know God loves us and wants us to be happy. So he will use these times to teach us, bless us and heal us if we turn to Him. He will bring sunshine back into our lives. I know this because I have experienced it before. And through this journey I am now I have felt His light shining through the storm clouds that threatened to overwhelm me. He is always there, even in our darkest, hardest moments.
Sunshine and Rainstorms 