Beauty in the Rain

 I checked the weather repeatedly - obsessively really.  I prayed constantly that the Lord would change what my app kept showing me which was 100% chance of rain. After all the struggles we had had on this trip, and having only two days to explore, why would the Lord allow it to rain all day during one of our two days in this incredible national park?  I couldn’t understand, and truthfully was highly disappointed and frustrated. 

This feeling is not a new one to me - frustrated and not understanding why God doesn’t answer my prayers the way that I think is best. I’ve prayed for life altering things and small things.  I’ve pleaded with the Lord to save my son from death, to heal those I love from terrible diseases and pain, to spare my kids from heartache, to provide for incredible needs, to stop terrible injustices,  and the list could go on.  In answer to some of those prayers, the Lord has shown that His answer was, “No.” He had other plans. Whether looking at death, or cancer, or abuse, or addiction, or mental illness, or chronic pain, it is hard to understand why the answer can sometimes be “no” to those prayers and how the Lord’s plans can still be good if it doesn’t involve rescue from those things. 

Despite all my praying and weather checking, the day arrived rainy. I was hopeful though because a ranger had said that one of the places we wanted to hike to was better after rain.  In my mind that still meant it needed to be dry to enjoy the actual hike but maybe there was some good in the rain that did come - as long as it stopped. We had a window in the rain and I got us all moving not wanting to miss the dry window we had!  We didn’t want to be out there in the rain. However, on and off through the first hike of the day, the rain came and went.  At the highest point in our hike it started really coming down and in my mind, it was far too soon. 

A little over fifteen years ago, I placed my four month old son in the ground far too soon in my limited perspective. Two weeks ago, the Lord took home a young man of just 16 who had been one of our campers, a friend to my boys, and a brother to sisters who have worked with us for many years. We love the whole family dearly and hate to see them have to weather this storm of grief. It all feels too soon and so unwanted. Sometimes the clouds build, things become overcast, and the rain in life comes and we aren’t ready. We don’t think the timing is right at all, and we don’t want it. What good can possibly come from the clouds, the storms? Why must the rain fall so heavily at times?

When we were at that highest point in the hike and the rain really began to come, I was questioning the decision to hike. All I could see anymore was the rain, the cold, the danger of slipping, the darkness.  The beauty of the waterfall in front of me was being drowned out by the discomfort I couldn’t see past.  My own grief and the grief I have felt for others has felt like drowning in the rain at times. Sometimes all I can see is the pain, the clouds, the hard, and the beauty of the Lord and His goodness is threatened to be swallowed by the storms of grief. 

With all my attention focused one way, I nearly missed it.  On my own, I may never have turned and looked up. What happens when the cares of this world have our heads hanging and our view is the pooling water and our soaked clothes?

 Grief weighs heavy like clothes soaked in the rain. 

Then one of my kids said, “Mom, look!” So I turned around and looked up. I’m not sure I will ever forget that moment of wonder. The sight that met me was too marvelous for words (or even picture). The sun was breaking through the clouds and streaming into the canyon and dancing off the drops of water which covered everything to a tune only audible to them. The fog hung suspended in the middle of the mountain. The colors were deep and rich (such as only a Master artist could create) due to the drenching everything had received. All at once what had seemed bitter, disappointing, and troubling, had been transformed to visual praise of our magnificent God, and the immediate thought the Lord impressed on my heart was,“Kim, I know best. I always answer in the right way at the right time.”  (Ecclesiastes 3:1, Lamentations 3:25-26, Jeremiah 29:11-12)

And my heart was drawn to join creation in its worship of the Creator.

The rain was not too soon, it couldn’t have been timed more perfectly. The rain, the drenching, the cold were not wasted but used to create more beauty than I could have imagined. The storm, led to a deeper worshiping, cherishing, and trusting of the Creator.

Storms are never wasted. And choosing to see God in the rain, leads to a deeper cherishing. 

If there is one thing I can say with confidence, it is that the loss of my son and the storm the Lord asked me to walk through as a result, gave the gift of Christ becoming so much sweeter to me.  That lesson in my early twenties is what the Lord uses over and over as a reminder to me with each new grief I walk through, or each hardship He asks me to walk with another. The beauty after a storm is sometimes incomprehensible in the midst of it, but undeniable over time as we keep walking with Him. When the Lord opens our eyes to see, it is breathtaking and life giving all at once. 

Sometimes it takes someone walking the path with us to help us keep remembering to look.  “Mom, look!” With those two words, all perspective shifted. He was on the path with me and not so weighed down that he couldn’t see and help me along the way. There are none to whom I would have listened to more quickly than those who had hiked all that way with me and stood in the rain braving the drenching and cold. 

I am thankful the Lord doesn’t always answer my prayers to stop the rain. I would miss so much of Him if He did.  How grateful I am for those He has placed in my life who are willing to do the hard work of walking in the rain with me, risking the drenching of sorrows and trials, and through their very presence and sometimes their words, remind me to look and see the wonder of the Lord. Sometimes we are just too drenched to feel like we can even lift our heads but we need not fear as He is a lifter of heads (Psalm 3:3), and sometimes he uses the hiker next to us to do it. (1 Samuel 23:16)

He doesn’t create beauty in-spite of the rain, He creates beauty through it, and it is more breathtaking than we can imagine because the beauty is a glimpse of Him. 

“Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent. He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind; he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire. He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.

May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works, who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke! I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being. May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord.”

Psalms 104:1-5, 31-34