Waiting for rain

Squall hat bought in Gloucester, MA hangs in the sun

I've been in all kinds of rain. As a little girl, I remember the sweet freedom of running through the warm summer rain in my underwear with my brothers. I remember being disappointed when I got "too old" for this and had to wait my turn till they were done and I could take my turn. That was independence rain, the rain of freedom.

I've been soaked in the rain of tears when parents lost a child. In the rain of sadness, the rain of despair. I've held on tight as we hugged through the worst, first piercing grief that brings you to your knees uncontrolled, crazy with weeping.

I've prayed for rain for our crops, and prayed rain would stay far away for family reunions and parties and playdates.

Right now I'm down in South Carolina, soaking up sun and waiting for the "big game" to start on Wednesday. In the next two weeks, I will complete two separate studies that together will finish my research for my degree. I'm praying for a flood of subjects to come through the doors of the college. For smooth data collection, and easy analysis.

Will you pray with me?

How to survive a rainy day

1. In two words: Easybake Oven

2. Throw caution to the wind and go get dirty!

3. Come up with a silly game and invite your cousin over.

4. Drink...

5...or eat something special and warm.

6. Take a stroll in the rain.

7. Stay inside and paint.

8. A beauty treatment or spa day is never a bad choice.

9. Prepare to be cuddled. A lot!

10. Head for shelter.

11. Have a tea party.

12. Remember, rain is beautiful,

13. and makes flowers grow...

14. and it never lasts long!

Another thought on storms

Seen in the hospital gift shop today:

"Life is not waiting until the storm passes,

but learning to dance in the rain."

That, in a nutshell, is what God has taught my husband, my children and I through this season of our lives. I have a hilarious memory of being allowed - at some ridiculous age like 10 or so - to run in the rain in our wooded backyard in the country, clothed only in my underwear. I will never forget the freedom of that sensation, skipping through the yard, naked, the icy chill of the raindrops and heat of the humidity rising from the grass. My brothers were in the basement, and I'm sure my mother watched me dance from the kitchen window. Now I must dance again, in a new way. He has stripped me of my "clothes" now in a spiritual sense. Instead of feeling fear in my nakedness, I need to relearn the happy dance I did in the rain as a child. Freedom? Is that what it is?  Or trust maybe?  Something you lose when you grow up, when you learn that you have to consider the future and not just the moment.

Singing in the rain

What to do when your friends are over for the day and it decides to rain? First, you stay inside and watch a bunch of silly movies, like "Funky Monkey", while your mom takes pictures of the adorable baby. And then you head outside for a game of "wrestle football" - one of those great, kid-created games that no adult could possibly understand.

You take the game really, really seriously.

No holds barred.

Then you take a "rest" which involves doing acrobatic routines on the climbing gym. Your mom gets tired just watching you "rest".

Then you get your game face back on.

And go for another spin around the rain-soaked yard.

Any other mom - any mom who hasn't had cancer teach her to make do with today and make some fabulous memories - would probably tell you "you're going to catch your death of cold".

This mom is happy to report that everyone seems to have survived famously,

and that 4 hour naps are in order this afternoon.

May Day

Faced with the question yesterday morning - "to sort laundry or not to sort laundry" - I chose the latter. Instead, we had an amazing late spring day, just the kids and I. Aaron has been in at work continuously - again, I wonder, blessing or trial? Can't even seem to sort the blessings from the trials in this confusing time. A reader here commented that it always seems like someone is deathly ill, and there is very little real life in our household. Yet it is there...crammed in every moment we are not separated by illness or the burdens of work that pile up when we are pulled away unexpectedly to tend hospital stays or diagnostic tests.

We are living life differently now than ever before. My children have been asking lately why our family is in the hospital and other families never go there. I don't have a good answer. It's something Aaron and I have pondered. The only reason we've been able to come up with is that perhaps God knows we are strong in this area of hospitals, illness and such. As nurses, there is little that is unfamiliar, except the actual lived experience of this. We know all the tests, the ins and outs of the hospital environment, how the relationships between services work. Perhaps God knows we can stand the heat of this particular furnace because our learning curve is different here - we know the details and now we just need to understand the issues of the soul, the emotions, the work of it from the patient perspective. I don't know. But that could be it.

So, friend. Here is life. One day of life carved out from among the teardrops and the rainstorms.

An ordinary lunch seemed boring.

So we opted for strawberries and cream.

An ordinary nap just didn't suffice.

So we pitched a tent and slept under the clouds,

bathed clean by the roar of the after-storm wind.

Ordinary bedfellows seemed too routine.

So we woke up with the cat - the outdoor, very pregnant cat.

May Day is anything but ordinary in the little slice of

Scandinavia that is our part of Wisconsin. So we scrounged

up some candy and lilac blossoms and snuck over to the neighbors.

When the storm has passed, the wicked has vanished,

but the righteous person has an everlasting foundation.

Proverbs 10:25

When the rain comes

God's promise is raining down on me fresh this week.

When the rain comes it seems that everyone has
gone away
When the night falls you wonder if you shouldn't
find someplace
To run and hide
Escape the pain
But hiding's such a lonely thing to do

I can't stop the rain
From falling down on you again
I can't stop the rain
But I will hold you 'til it goes away

When the rain comes
you blame it on the things that
you have done
When the storm fades
you know that rain must fall
on everyone
Rest awhile
it'll be alright
No one loves you like I do
When the rain comes
I will hold you

~ When the Rain Comes, Third Day

Have You Ever Been Alone with God? Oswald Chambers (scroll back a day, too: I've linked to my favorite of a two part series)

One misty, moisty morning

My mother used to sing us a little esoteric nursery rhyme on days like today:

One misty, moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather;
I chanced to meet an old man, dressed all in leather;
He began to compliment, and I began to grin,
"How do you do? How do you do? How do you do?" again.

Today is that misty, moisty morning. The warm sun gave way to sheets of frozen rain drilling holes in the remaining snowbed, the sizzle heard from inside the warm kitchen nook. The cottonwood and the pine, my favorite trees, are married up in the hazy cold, arms entwined, stallwart survivors of a 100 winters past.

I think the whole family has been feeling a little misty, moisty and gray. The lingerings of our bad cold plague all of us, and the weather isn't helping much. While I feel bleary eyed and stiff this morning, my girls are blithe and limpid in the face of headaches and sore eyes. What a difference thirty years make!

Rain

Remember, our message is not about ourselves; we're proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Master. All we are is messengers, errand runners from Jesus for you. It started when God said, "Light up the darkness!" and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful. If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us. As it is, there's not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. We've been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we're not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we've been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn't left our side; we've been thrown down, but we haven't broken. ~ II Corinthians 4:5-12 (Message)


We woke up to a slow, cold February rain. In Wisconsin, rain in February is invariably accompanied by sleet-driving winds and icy driveways. I woke up expecting sun, or snow, or at worst, a gray wind. Rain wasn't in my plans. Nor my childrens...magically, they awake to every day as if it were a surprise to be discovered. No plans to be lived up to, or destroyed.

Raindrops on the windows, freezing before they ran the length of the pane. A new experience for the youngest of the three girls. She was in a state of awe, tracing their tracks down the windowpanes and gleefully waking her sisters at first light to share the bliss of a rainstorm in February.


Cancer is my rain in February. Unexpected, it raises the stakes. I feel as though I am thoroughly entrenched in my adult mindset, looking out on a dreary day with fatigue and hopelessness and disappointment. Cancer is a ride down a path I didn't see coming, a fork in the road that I would rather not take. To my children, it is an endless myriad of discovery as we explore the depths of God's grace and plumb the well of His eternal kindness. I looked at the rain today with fresh eyes, and cancer with it. An allegory is so much easier to grasp than real life.