“Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.”

– Roger Miller

I’ve been thinking a lot about rain lately.  Maybe that’s because we really need some rain.  The garden is looking tired and droopy; and although I have watered it, my feeble attempts simply don’t deliver the deep soaking that their roots really need.  Each morning, I look up at the sky and scan for clouds that might carry enough moisture to overflow and bring some relief to the dry spell.  I smile when I remember my childhood and the feeling of betrayal I experienced when a summer storm would wash away my plans for outdoor fun.  I think about the perspective we gain as maturity takes over the reins from childhood and becomes responsible for navigating life.   As we mature and learn to live with balance and intention, we grow to appreciate the sun and the rain; the winter and the summer; the spring and the fall.  Each season brings its own blessings and challenges.  Each day brings its own backdrop.  Our joy and our responsibility is to keep on walking — rain or shine — and meet head-on what life has to offer.

When I was a child, I remember hearing the verse from the Bible — Matthew 5:45 — about how God sends rain to fall on the just and the unjust.  In my immature view of the world, and my desire to spend every minute of every summer day playing in the sun, I came away from this teaching with the understanding that even if I was a good person, God would send rain to mess up my plans — that I could never be good enough to warrant being rewarded with sunny days.  I suppose Roger Miller would say that when it rained, I just got wet.  That certainly was my attitude on days when my plans were disrupted by a thunderstorm.  I got rained on.  Life just happened to me — no matter how nice a person I tried to be.

As I grew and my world expanded beyond the end of my own nose, I learned about parts of the world where rain was so scarce that people feared they would die of thirst.  I learned that there were people who walked miles to a water source and carried as much as their arms could bear back to their homes.  Their plans never were washed down the gutter to the storm sewer.  I thought about how I might feel about rain if I lived in their world.  Still, I often let life just rain on me, feeling helpless to do anything that would make it easier to get caught in the storm.

When I was thirty years old, my second child, Brett, was killed in an accident.  This was a pivotal point in my life.  He was only 6 years old, and in an instant he walked into the path of a car and was gone.  If feeling helpless is like getting caught in the rain, I was drowning in a monsoon.  My whole world was turned upside down; and I learned, once again, that God sent the rain — no matter how nice we were — to wreak havoc in our lives.  In the midst of my grief and helplessness, I slipped into a strange church in a town far from my home.  The preacher was talking about Matthew 5:45 that day.  He presented a different point of view that completely changed the way I saw life.

He spoke of the blessing of water and all the abundance it brings to the world.  He spoke of thirst being quenched.  He spoke of crops growing vigorously because of the life-giving rain.  I can picture that pew in that faraway church as though I had been there yesterday, because that was the day I was given the gift of knowing that the rain falls on the just and the unjust because God loves each and every one of us — whether we are good enough or not.  As the years passed and the healing from my loss began to outweigh my grief, I discovered that there were things I had learned about myself and about my world by burying my son that displaced some of my sorrow with new-found strength.  I learned that every bit of life is filled with blessings — sun and rain, spring and fall, winter and summer — and that all I have to do is walk intentionally, with faith, into whatever the day may bring.

No longer do I focus on getting wet when life rains.  What really matters is that I love the walk.  Some people walk in the rain — some dance.