Rain

That’s about all I have to say today. It rained on Friday – drenching, pouring rain. I woke up from a nap (okay, so don’t be mad at me, I took a nap on Friday) and I heard a strange sound. My sun-dried brain could not quite place it. I went to the bathroom and through the vent in the ceiling, I heard a whooshing sound. Could it be? I went to the front door and opened it and, yes, it was. It really was pouring rain outside. Still hot and now humid, but definitely WET. I walked out and much to my children’s surprise, I just stood there. I had heard that it might rain that day but I had the grain of salt readily available. But there I was holding my hands out and soaking it up just like my sage bushes. Each child ventured out for a moment only to scream with glee when the rain hit them and run back inside. I stood out there for a few minutes and then it really started to slap me, so I scooted on in (you don’t want your neighbors to think you are a COMPLETE fool). No sooner had I stepped inside than my phone rang and it was my husband, “Did you know it was raining?”

I didn’t know I had missed it so much.

I love the way the earth smells and I love the way the green of the trees is never greener than when it is set against a blue-black sky. I love the way the water in the air gives everything around me an intense, cool hue.

Some people tell me that if I lived somewhere where it rained all the time I would tire of it. Perhaps that is true. I know that I got tired of the rain coming UP into my umbrella when I walked the streets of Boston as a student (but that had more to do with wind than rain) and I remember kind of being tired of being WET all the time. But I do remember the Charles River after a rain and that soaky gray of the buildings and that even there in the middle of a city like that, the earth could still smell a little newer.

But I will say there is no rain like Southwest rain, where you can actually watch a storm come down a valley toward you, where you can get so high up on a mountain you can watch the rain from above, where you can see the biggest bluest blackest clouds ever, and where you can even watch rainfall that never makes it all the way to the ground.

Thank you, Lord, for the sweet simple joy of rain on a dry land.