I didn’t mind the rain. I had a short walk from my home to my office. The sidewalks I meandered were lined with tall towering leafy green trees intercepting rain drops transforming them into occasional trickles barely touching my skin. While cars drove past with windshield wipers rapidly swishing left to right, I didn’t even bother with an umbrella. I smiled, grateful for one less thing to juggle, already, sipping my tea, minding puddles, mentally begging my bag to stay on my shoulder for just one more block.
I also smiled grateful for the ways in which grace keeps me from feeling the full impact of so many things in life. Grace does not mean we won’t experience any storms in life or that we’ll be spared rainy moments and seasons in life. It doesn’t mean our paths will be dry, nicely paved, well lit, and we will only observe the torrential heartaches of others. It does mean we will experience the rain in our lives differently. In any given season of our lives because grace is so acutely aware of what we can handle we won’t become drenched. We can walk confidently and with gratitude, forgo the umbrella and raincoat, because grace has us covered. Grace lines our path, stands strong and tall, towering over us, keeping and shielding us from more than we can bear. Grace steps in and makes sure that we are never carrying or experiencing more than we are capable, but instead only allows us to engage in circumstances, situations, and setbacks that we can handle through a more than sufficient grace.
Don’t get me wrong. I would love grace to swoop in and keep me from all the messy, hard, difficult, uncomfortable, unsavory things in life. Or better yet, it could just make sure those things don’t even come within like a two foot radius of me and there would be nothing to rescue me from. I could totally go through life with less incidences of racism, sexism, loneliness, heartache, depression, anxiety, debt, job dissatisfaction, disappointment. I know lots of folks who’d happily return to sender the miscarriage, infertility, sexual abuse, divorce, infidelity, house foreclosure, layoff, low self esteem, cancer diagnosis, mental illness diagnosis, death of a loved one, denied business loan, significant other who couldn’t seem to love them back or compliment them outside of when they want sex or money. If those raindrops, and all the others like human trafficking, natural disasters that wipe out towns, homes, and people, or the cages children are in at the US borders because anti immigration has led to anti humanity, could miss us, miss our hearts, our minds, our lives, and we could bask in glorious sunshine, wouldn’t that be delightful?!
Grace knows it wouldn’t be as delightful as we think. It knows we need the rain.
We need the very circumstances we find ourselves in. We need the things in our life that are going swimmingly. Insert praise hand emoji. We also need the things that have us typing smh, omg, #done, and insert the shades of red angry faced emoji or the sad face and tears emoji.
Rain is an integral part of growth. Literally. We’d be in really bad shape if it did not rain. We’d be hungry, thirsty, prepped for death. That sounds drastic, but stop and think about what the earth would be like if rain ceased. We could try to utilize water reserves and creatively drain the ocean, but at some point water would be gone and without rain to replenish, so would we.
The rain in our lives is not much different. It grows things in us that would not grow otherwise. That love, compassion, empathy, patience would struggle to take root and break ground on our life without rain. That invention, business, book, song, passion project, or non profit, would be an idea if rainy circumstances didn’t push us to go from idea to action to reality. Our voice wouldn’t be cultivated if we could stay silent and never speak up about injustice. That person you are now very content with dating wouldn’t have stood a chance if you’d been bent on making things work with the previous Mr. or Ms. Right. You wouldn’t have gone as far in your education or career if it wasn’t for the occasional naysayer whose voice you learned to ignore as you pushed yourself and met with academic and professional victory and a few good cheerleaders along the way.
My hope for you this week is that as the rain comes in your life you remember grace is interceding on your behalf . You will never feel the drops more than what grace sees fit. The privilege and gift of gritting out your journey in grace is that you can be in the same storm as another and find yourself not needing an umbrella or a raincoat where they may be using windshield wipers to navigate, because grace has you covered, emphasis on you. That you remember grace is so committed to your growth, your fulfilling your purpose, that it will never allow rain in your life to the point of flooding; only and always to grow, to guide, to produce what has been purposefully been planted in you. And, may you remember that which grace is growing in you is because the world needs your harvest. People are waiting on only what you can give it, and you can only give what grace has purposefully and perfectly given you.