The grace of rain

It is raining this morning, such a rare grace in this arid desert valley. 

Although so many responsibilities call me to so many places and tasks, some part of me wishes that I could remain in this single space for something nigh on forever, listen to the drops falling on thirsty ground, find some rhythm in the cadence of their landings, hear the occasional call of a bird as it wings toward shelter.

Having lived most of my life in arid, desert places, I can’t help but love the rain. Even words related to rain evoke a sense of magic when I hear them – like petrichor, which I sensed yesterday for the first time in months as the first clouds blew in over a city that has been without rain for far too long. The sense blew in over me and I wanted to do nothing but sit there and breathe it in.

At times, I’ve wondered why I love the rain so much. I know what a trial it can be, creating slick roads and uncertain conditions, muddied shoes and calling forth an unwanted ache in bones and muscles. Even floods, broken bridges, landslides. But it also feels as though a wordless sigh rises from the ground every time the rain begins to fall, as though places that have been thirsting so long for something – something that maybe they could not even name or give words to, words like petrichor or storm cloud or drizzle – can finally drink and find, if not a complete and lasting end to the drought, at least a momentary quenching for their thirst.

I think of my own thirst, the drought of my own heart, the places and times I felt a cloud would never again appear on the horizon and my throat would stay dry, my need unquenched forever. I also think of the places that have served as oases, as ponds, as rivers for me. Not always physical places, of course. Books, filling in for clouds and rains and monsoon, enough to fill an ocean of longing. Friendships, quenching that unspeakable need. Writing, to understand what I think and feel and believe, to find threads that weave together a shade against a scorching sun. 

Faith, the centerpiece of it all. The God who reaches into our desert spaces with rain, with living waters, to bring forth life. 

As the daughter of Christian missionaries, I rarely had reason or wherewithal to question what I was taught to believe. Just as the places we live become part of us, so do the stories we hear and read. Stories from the Bible are a part of me – the characters within those pages icons of the direction I should walk. But these characters I placed on pedestals as a child were also broken people. Their stories are shadowed with sorrows. They were broken by the deserts they walked, the hunger with which they lived and so often died, never completely emerging from that place of inconsolable longing. 

I find myself returning to their stories as I recall and sift and gather so much to my heart and mind. Perhaps it is my effort to find beauty, to discover grace, even in their desert places. There’s something about places, especially the desert ones; they reflect experiences, lived moments. They mirror truth. 

There’s something about stories as well. They reflect the human experience, a joy and delight we all share and at times crave. Whether labeled truth or fiction, nonfiction or essay, the story hopefully evokes truth, which rises as an inconsolable longing within us all.

Right now, although the rain continues, the sky in one part of the horizon is clear and the sun has broken through. I know there will be a rainbow somewhere, even if dim and obscured among the clouds. I don’t know if this ray of sun will carry with it a wind that chases the clouds away or if the wind will rise and bring more clouds and more rain. 

For now, this moment at least, I drink in, as if I am a woman standing beside a well in midday, discovering for the first time a fountain of waters.