Rain pounds down, relentless.
I pack up my suitcase for another long weekend away, away from my current state of adjustment to a new life in a new state. Supposedly, storms bring newness, refreshment, and renewal. Everything still seems to be the same.
I had thought by now I’d have more solid answers to this life, but I only have the certainty that all I can expect is the unseen. To be satisfied in the shimmer, clear ripple across the air, instead of solid ground beneath me.
Here I go, grasping at my head, my heart, my mind, attempting to piece them together as I see fit. As I keep guessing about the work of God here, He reassembles it all, and disbands what I desperately strain to hold.
I thought a great many things would have materialized by now. But, like the next batch of rain moving in, I am held in suspension, kept in wait. Heart hovers its hope and flesh exposed as I am charged with stepping one foot in front of the other, only today given a true glance at what God has called me to at this moment.
Be patient and trust, the still, small voice kindly says. I want the tangible, proof laid before me of what this trust even looks like.
Relax, I tell myself, release your grip on what was never even yours to begin with.
Branches bow low in the wind, already heavy and loaded with water-drenching leaves. In this severe weather that draws charcoal in the sky and has all counties on edge, there is a beautiful calm in its wildness, the unexpected patterns, and how these clouds hammer wherever they desire. Unscripted orchestration, power, and pause, lightning lithe down its walkway. A beautiful terror, or terrible beauty.
Who’s to say they aren’t the same?
So, too, my life.
I crack my window open and allow the cool rinse of rain through the screen. The splatter of drops splits crisp across my ears. I toss a shirt in my suitcase and pause. A bird calls out from a short distance. Surviving the storm. Bringing its sweet voice across the current.
They say you should always be running towards something, not away. But I am not running, for there is nothing really to escape that I don’t need to face head-on, and besides, there is nowhere to hide. I have been exposed since day one, try as I may to patch layers onto my peeling skin. I am merely resetting, smoothing over the sting of disappointment to disbanded dreams, unmet expectations, and surrendering to how my heart can heal when I take my own effort out of the equation and fall on God.
Let the rain flow where it falls. I know better than to sit a cracked cup outside my door and hope to fill it to the brim. I know better than to try and plug the sky. Let it fall. Let everything I’ve tried to fight come pouring into my soul. Throw open those windows and feel the cool whip of water refresh the places I’ve left parched far too long.
This rain brings reset as salve for my growing places, the buds in my blood that begin to push forward. I leave for a brief moment, but I will be back. Life here clears inner debris among the dew-glistened sky.
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