So I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s been raining cats and dogs in L.A. all week. By that, I do mean every day of the week since Sunday, which is pretty darn amazing and quite frankly abnormal. And we’re not talking about some paltry drizzling here and there; sometimes it really pours down in sheets. I haven’t seen this much rain since Virginia.
Not that I’m complaining, of course. In case you hadn’t noticed (especially in some of my older entries), I love love looooove rain. I grew up in rain – lots and lots of it. Tropical thunderstorm rain, sunshowers upon sunshowers, mudprint art on the pavement for a brief spell before the next torrent of rain, banana leaf umbrellas, mud tackle football and soccer in the rain, walking home from school barefoot (shoes tend to get useless after the first five minutes of trekking through ankle-deep mud puddles), family piano concerts in the pitch-black darkness during thunderstorm power outages, and an occasional exciting jolt from some poor lightening-struck tree out by the soccer field next to my house.
During monsoon season, the first thing my friends and I did after school was peel off our shoes and head straight for the field. Nobody ever said, “Let’s go play in the rain!” because duh, what else would you do on a fantastic stormy afternoon? Three hours later, we would all slosh home to a warm dinner, and come back the next day to do pretty much the same thing. In retrospect, I feel bad for our moms and pembantus who had to mop up our watery trails through the house and launder our muddy clothes. But man, those were some happy times.
Imagine my shock (and disgust) when I first moved to the States and had my first COLD rainfall. Ugh. But I did learn to appreciate it more once I discovered that I tend to be so much more productive (especially in the journaling/writing/baking/knitting department) when it rains, regardless of temperature. I guess God was trying to teach me I can’t go play out in the rain all the way into my sixties (although I tell you, I will probably try).
Speaking of God, I think He likes rain, too. What a useful thing. In the Bible, it stands for both disaster and blessing. We all know Genesis has Him wiping out mankind (minus Noah & Co.) with forty days of rain. Ezekiel has torrents of rain falling with destructive fury at the wrath of the Lord. Matthew talks of rain that pours down upon the house built upon a rock, then upon the house that fell with a great crash. There are also storms scattered throughout the Testaments, from the one that had Jonah thrown overboard and the figurative ones across the Psalms, to the one that was rebuked into silence and, of course, the violent ones weathered by that persevering man Paul.
But then again there’s good, sweet rain. The kind that falls to quench and nourish a parched land. Many times God withholds rain at a time when it is much needed. The funny thing about this type of rain is that you sort of assume it’s coming until it…doesn’t. You rely on patterns, on previous experiences. And you hold out for a bit thinking you can get through it until it becomes apparent that you can’t because…because…you’re just a thirsty, weepy human with small hands. So what do you do? You ask for some mighty big Hands to open up the skies and wave Him your umbrella for emphasis.
Someone told me the other day that it always rains a lot in SoCal after an especially bad season of fires. Somehow, that makes a lot of sense to me at the moment. And…this entry does not. Hm. But I’m too confused and tired and sick to properly wrap up my thoughts. So…mm…let’s see. It’s raining a lot here, I like rain, God likes rain, and rain comes down in droves after fire (why droves, you ask? because…well…cats and dogs…).
Yeah.
