The First Drop of Rain Read online

  Resources by Les and Leslie Parrott

  Also by Leslie Parrott

  If You Ever Needed Friends, It’s Now

  You Matter More Than You Think

  God Loves You Nose to Toes (children’s book)

  Marshmallow Clouds (children’s book)

  Books

  Becoming Soul Mates

  The Complete Guide to Marriage Mentoring

  Getting Ready for the Wedding

  I Love You More (and workbooks)

  Just the Two of Us

  Love Is …

  The Love List

  Love Talk (and workbooks)

  Meditations on Proverbs for Couples

  The Parent You Want to Be

  Pillow Talk

  Questions Couples Ask

  Relationships (and workbook)

  Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts (and workbooks)

  Saving Your Second Marriage Before It Starts (and workbooks)

  3 Seconds

  51 Creative Ideas for Marriage Mentors

  Trading Places (and workbooks)

  Your Time-Starved Marriage (and workbooks)

  Video Curriculum—ZondervanGroupware®

  Complete Resource Kit for Marriage Mentoring

  I Love You More

  Love Talk

  Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

  Audio

  I Love You More

  Love Talk

  Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

  Saving Your Second Marriage Before It Starts

  The Parrent You Want to Be

  Trading Places

  When Bad Things Happen to Good Marriages

  You Matter More Than You Think

  Your Time-Starved Marriage

  ZONDERVAN

  The First Drop of Rain

  Copyright © 2009 by The Foundation for Healthy Relationships

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan e-books.

  Mobipocket Reader February 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-28966-1

  This title is also available as a Zondervan ebook. Visit www.zondervan.com/ebooks.

  This title is also available in a Zondervan audio edition. Visit www.zondervan.fm.

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Parrott, Leslie L., 1964-

  The first drop of rain / Leslie Parrott.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-310-27248-9 (hardcover)

  1. Consolation. 2. Suffering—Religious aspects—Christianity.

  3. Encouragement—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.

  BV4905.3.P37 2009

  248.8′6—dc22 2009000090

  * * *

  All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

  Material reprinted from T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922. Public domain.

  Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers printed in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Published in association with Yates & Yates, www.yates2.com.

  * * *

  09 10 11 12 13 14 • 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Ophelia’s daughters with much love

  Adrianne, Marilyn, Kay, and Jill

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  a note to the reader

  part i

  1 seattle rain

  2 the wasteland

  3 seeing double

  4 broken images

  5 relentless sun

  6 unreal city

  7 beneath the shadow

  part ii

  8 waiting for rain

  9 vapor rising

  10 what the wind is doing

  11 low clouds

  12 thinking of a key

  13 surface tension

  14 stony places

  15 death by water

  16 feet in the sand

  part iii

  17 dew drops

  18 sea fog

  19 globes of ice

  20 little raindrops

  21 ice dream

  22 thunderhead

  23 storm chaser

  24 low visibility

  25 scent of rain

  26 expectancy

  27 timing is everything

  28 sprinkled grass

  part iv

  29 moonbow

  30 magic moment

  31 the emptiest places

  32 air currents

  33 brooks that hold the sky

  34 walking on mars

  35 deep waters

  36 living fossils

  postlude

  acknowledgments

  a note to the reader

  As I have written these pages from my rainy corner of the world, I have felt the warm companionship of you, my reader, and a deep gratitude for the investment you are making in your own life, your own relationships, and your own work and call.

  As you read this book, I want you to feel free to approach it in your own way, at your own pace.

  For some of you, that might mean taking the book as a whole, stopping occasionally to write your own thoughts as you ponder the questions. You may want to do some journaling as you engage with the content and poetry that comes from the pages of my own personal journals.

  If you tend toward the contemplative side, you may prefer taking a more devotional approach to the book. You might read just one of the brief chapters each day, mindfully pondering the questions that are contained within.

  Still others might find that each of the four parts is ideal for a four-session small group study. Your small group or book club can use the questions at the end of each chapter as discussion starters to guide and deepen your shared learning experience.

  More than anything, I hope you will find your own way through these pages, and more than that, through any dry and fragile moments, hours or days, I hope you will find your way to the miracle of that first drop of rain.

  seattle rain

  Here in Seattle we think a lot about rain. Actually I don’t need to think much about rain—I never carry an umbrella and rarely pull on a coat—but rain is an ever-present part of the landscape, my reality. It’s a steady companion, a gentle mist that follows me, day by damp day.

  Rain, with its dark skies, gray days, and dreariness, is liquid disappointment. Rain is a symbol of ruin, a catalyst for corrosion, a creator of rust. We steel ourselves, stockpiling resources for a rainy day. Discouragement dampens our spirit, and no one likes to hang around a wet blanket. Rain is a pain, a bother. Our children sing, “Rain, rain, go away, come again so
me other day.”

  Yet this is not the whole story. In the forty-fifth year of my raindrenched life, I have come to see rain as compelling proof of God’s gracious, giving nature.

  An absence of rain turns a place into a desert, a wasteland. If you’ve ever been parched and felt faint and studied the horizon for the smallest sign of hope, then you know the feeling. You know the feeling of hope at a softly darkening sky, the sharp-sweet scent of wet air, and the transparent but tangible first drop of rain.

  That first drop of rain begins a transformation from hunger to fruitfulness. Rain streams down from clouds like banners across the landscape of your life.

  The rain in Seattle is soft today, something between a drizzle and a mist. It’s not showoff rain like the magnificent storms from my childhood in Kansas. It’s a continuous slick soundtrack to my life. Most days it’s so familiar that it fades into the background. It’s not until I find a still, introspective center that I am captivated by the rain. My eyes follow drops outside the leaded window, drops that sparkle and shine as they form, fall, slide, and gather in shifting, mirrored pools. Each drop holds eternity—from cloud to ground and back, world without end.

  A professor once told me that nothing can belong to us, even our own experience, unless we understand it. I watch my life with my eyes. I touch it with my fingers. My mind considers and my heart longs. Across the landscape of my interior, truth coalesces and I begin to understand. As I write my stories, I begin to understand.

  Each drop of rain is ancient and new. “If there is magic on this planet,” says Loren Eisley, “it is contained in water” (The Immense Journey, 1957). Rain is the mystery of God’s presence and God’s absence across the landscape of my life.

  to ponder

  What comes to your mind when you hear the word rain? Is it positive or negative and why?

  When you hear that nothing can belong to us, even our own experience, unless we understand it, what do you think? Do you agree? Why or why not?

  the wasteland

  What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

  Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

  You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

  A heap of broken images, where the sun beats.

  T.S. Eliot

  All too often I find myself in the desert of life, peering up at the beating sun in a cloudless sky. This is the wasteland. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land describes this desert life. I first encountered Eliot’s visionary poem as an undergraduate when I signed up for a required literature course. As it happened, the course—focused entirely on The Waste Land—changed my life. As my professor helped us see the layers of allusion, language, and imagery, I felt my spirit expanding. It was the deepest encounter I had ever had with the printed word outside the Bible.

  I became a student of poetry and of culture. The course opened my eyes to how much there is to know and say. I saw layers beyond the surface. I understood that something true in its simplest form grows truer still as you unpack the wisdom within. The Waste Land contains narrative from Scripture—Ezekiel, Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Philippians, the Gospels—and is replete with images borrowed from and allusions to the great works of Milton, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Dante. Eliot weaves images from great operas, celebrated plays, and masterful visual art. The English language cannot contain the poem, and it spills over to include Greek and Sanskrit. The Waste Land is a difficult delight.

  Studying this poem taught me how to be thoughtful about my own experiences. It taught me that image and metaphor can reach my heart, that insight is gained more easily through indirect teaching. When we allow ourselves to be caught up in a story that isn’t ours, our guard drops and, almost without realizing it, we are able to draw conclusions that are both personal and insightful.

  Eliot makes visible the unseen journey of life and faith. His poem, even twenty-five years after I first read it, describes my interior landscape with startling accuracy. It helped to form my understanding of how vast, complex, and layered the territory of the soul is—a great stretch of undiscovered wasteland.

  Now I am forty-five and balancing the parenting of two young boys—spelling tests, book reports, Sunday school, soccer games, ortho appointments, vision therapy, field trips, play dates, and something important I’m forgetting—with a marriage of nearly twenty-four years and a career that requires frequent travel and weekly teaching responsibilities. And still, Eliot’s words nurture me. On my way home from work with the never-ending skritchsloosh of the windshield wipers, Eliot’s lines come to mind: “At the violet hour, when the eyes and back / turn upward from the desk / when the human engine waits.”

  I watch the sky turn to deeper hues of blue violet and finally darken. That transformation pulls me away from urgent details of my daily life into a hushed reverence, into the quietness of God’s presence in the darkening sky.

  When my life is a desert, I feel dry enough to crumble into a handful of dust. Like this morning. I set my alarm for 5:45 to steal a bit of time for coffee and contemplation, for a momentary echo of the interior conversations I used to engage in before kids and chaos intervened. I sport granny glasses now—not because I need them but because I am so tired my eyes won’t focus (maybe I do need them the teensiest bit). Glasses perched, I sip my coffee, spiked with French vanilla cream, and attempt to focus on my Bible, on what God is doing here and now and how I am to cooperate.

  Life seems as blurry and unreadable as the small print. Like when three of my dear friends told me they are moving across the country simultaneously. When a recent phone call told me my aunt—between jobs and without health insurance—woke in the middle of the night with a feverish illness. When my son’s emotional meltdowns must mean something important that I can’t manage to discern.

  I don’t need to know every answer. I just need, for a moment, to get my head above these present circumstances. What is God revealing to me? Where is he moving? What is my place in this world?

  But what I really want as I sip my coffee is to go back to sleep. That’s when my son Jackson runs out of the bedroom to snuggle with me on the couch. I look at the clock. We have thirty minutes to get out the door before my other son, John, gets a tardy slip. I hurry through the required motions—not with deep inner strength and certitude, but with puffy eyes, blurry vision, and anxiety about how I’ll navigate the day ahead.

  This is where I live—somewhere between the wasteland and the rain.

  to ponder

  When do you most feel like you are traveling in the desert of life? Be specific. What makes you feel this way?

  Do you ever feel as if you are living between the wasteland and the rain? Why?

  Rain

  You coalesce in clouds

  Grow heavy

  Stretch

  Let go

  Snap into a tiny ball

  And fall

  Gathering speed in flight

  Liquid simplicity

  Transparent as glass

  Yet holding mysteries beyond

  Our knowing

  Locked in molecules and gas.

  How is it you defy gravity?

  Drawing nutrients up

  To nurture plants,

  And more amazing still,

  Throughout me.

  You act as a prism—reflecting light

  Creating rainbows in your flight.

  Dissolving rocks

  You trickle down

  And at the lowest point

  Begin to rise

  Changed by the sun

  (A new disguise)

  Until you find your home

  With other drops

  A cloud to form.

  I stand

  And let you drench me down

  I see your pools

  Collecting on the ground

  But all the while I sense

  Hinting at Something

  You are a clue

  A reflection

  Of the One

  Who
is not you.

  seeing double

  I could not

  Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

  Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

  Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

  T.S. Eliot