The First Drop of Rain Page 6
She wasn’t the only joyful one. The room was full of people blessed from knowing her. We all sensed something, an unexpected goodness. One by one, people began to tell stories about Larie. College students who had been mentored and discipled thanked her. Nieces and nephews who had been adored by her revealed their pet name—“B.A.L.D.”—after she had cheekily demanded they call her “Beautiful Aunt Larie Dear.” Past coworkers, friends, neighbors … the stories went on and on.
My son Jackson took the mic. He was three. He sang “Zippidee-doo-dah!” It captured the moment, especially when he belted out, “Everything is satisfactual!”
And it was. It was fresh and glorious, like drops of dew clinging to the silken strands of a grand web in the growing light of the rising sun.
to ponder
Is there someone or something in your life that is overdue for a celebration?
What parts of yourself have been neglected and gone unnoticed for too long? What can you do to remind yourself of the unnoticed beauty in your life?
The Appearing
Glistening beads of water
Appear on blades of green.
The process of your forming
Entirely unseen.
Nights of perfect calm
And clarity
Lead to your refreshing
Charity.
Vapor hovers low
Condenses on the ground.
Cool airs rise
And then,
Rain ascends
from the ground—
Without making a sound.
A miracle of moisture
Upside down.
sea fog
The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard… .
And their friends, …
Departed, have left no addresses.
T.S. Eliot
Sometimes I want to disappear. I long to open my own wardrobe to Narnia or slip on a ring that transports me to the wood between the worlds. I want to be hidden from everyone’s gaze. First comes a sense of failure in a relationship, or on a project, or internally, and I begin to look for a way out. I want to hide. I want to regroup.
Fourteen years ago, we adopted a young cat from the Seattle Animal Shelter. Everyone in our family loves Harper. When it comes to tuck-in prayers, Harper is lavished with so many that my aunt declared Harper the most prayed-for cat in the world. Harper always sleeps with John, one paw on him at all times. Jackson, five years younger, is still too wiggly at night to be “safe.”
During the daytime, Harper disappears. She is an inventive hider, tucking herself in and under impossibly small nooks. The boys love to report where Harper was found trapped. She clearly loves us and we take tender care of her, but that doesn’t stop her from needing to get away from us and be apart. I identify with her yearning to be hidden.
I can be inventive too. Recently my email went down, and rather than seeking to fix the problem, I waited patiently—virtuously—for it to be fixed for months. I wanted to be concerned that it was difficult to contact me, but I wasn’t. When I’m hiding, I’m really glad to listen to your sweet phone message, and I intend to let you know how much I appreciate you … but I won’t. When Norah Jones sings soulfully, “I don’t know why I didn’t come,” I think, amen. I can be downright rude. It’s one of my most unlikable qualities, and it makes me sad to think of what I have missed out on and who I may have hurt.
Like my friend Kate. Her mom died on Easter weekend after a long, brave battle with cancer. Death in the midst of resurrection. Kate, a nurse, provided much of the physical care herself at home rather than sending her mom to hospice. Kate and I have been close since high school—she was a bridesmaid in my wedding and we share so many memories. We haven’t lived in the same city for decades, but I still hold her dear in my heart.
When a mutual friend called to say that Kate’s mom had died, I intended to call Kate immediately. I cried for her. I thought about her as I went through my day. But then, in the midst of my busyness, I didn’t call. That failure, of course, made me feel guilty and even less inclined to call. I can hardly believe I’m still stalling. Kate must think I’ve forgotten her. She doesn’t know I’ve cried for her, thought of her, prayed for her. I have—but I’ve kept it hidden.
Some people manage to hide away for good reasons. Jesus regularly had times apart from his disciples and the crowds. He had mountains and gardens he went to for prayer. After Paul had his Damascus Road experience, he went under the radar for a time before he surfaced to begin his missionary work.
These times of withdrawal weren’t destructive, although they might have disappointed some. There is something inherently healthy about hiding at the right time, in the right place, for the right reasons. I’ve started to pray for God’s Spirit to be like a fog in my life—for the Spirit to descend and cover me when it is time for me to be hidden. And to equip me with the courage I need to remain fully present and non-anxious until he gives me the gift of retreat.
The beach is my place apart. I imagine myself on the edge of the sea, surrounded by a holy fog and the soft, insistent voice of the only One I need to hear. If you ever stumble upon me there, don’t be surprised if I look a little disappointed to be found.
to ponder
Are there times you feel the urge to withdraw from life and hide away? What triggers this need for you?
Are there times you have chosen to withdraw as a form of escape? Are you able to allow yourself time that you set apart as a healthy choice? How do you know the difference?
Be Still
Rain falls,
Snow drifts,
Sleet and hail
Descend—
hard
and crisp.
But when water stops,
And floats in the air,
Touching the earth,
With delicate care,
And is denser
than a hazy mist—
Fog has arrived.
For me,
This is bliss.
The best kind of fog
Hangs over the sea
And wraps its blanket
Over earth
And Tree.
And the magic of it is
To disappear—
And still to be.
globes of ice
The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands.
T.S. Eliot
In 1970, the year my family moved to Kansas from Texas, there was such a bad storm in Coffeyville that a hailstone fell to the ground measuring a bit over seventeen inches around. That’s a piece of ice as big as a cantaloupe. Even normal hail can damage property, people, and animals. Hail falls at a speed of more than twenty miles an hour. Storm winds intensify its punch.
My friend Debbie told me about a couple caught in the middle of a hailstorm of life. The new youth pastor at her church has a baby boy named Joncee, who was born with a rare genetically inherited cancer in his eye. His parents understood what might happen and prepared themselves for radiation therapy or, at worst, an artificial eye. When an X-ray detected fast-growing tumors, an operation to remove the eye was scheduled.
As doctors prepped little Joncee for this dramatic surgery, they found his blood counts were off. Either infection was ravaging his body or he had leukemia. Next came bone marrow tests. His parents were weak with fear.
They knew there was a storm coming, but not this kind of storm. Not these hailstones. A sense of overwhelming paralysis comes with such intimate pain. The morning of the test, Debbie took the young family to Starbucks. It was all she could think to do for the young couple as they awoke to the day that could change their lives.
The apostle Peter speaks confidently of a day that is coming when we’ll have it all—life healed and whole. “I know how great this makes you feel,” he says,
“even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime” (1 Peter 1:6).
Every part of me believes this. Needs to believe it. But it’s that “in the meantime” bit that wraps around my heart like an icy vice. How do you live—how do you order a coffee—when you’re taking your baby to the hospital?
Peter pleads with us to “call out to God for help” and to believe that “he helps—he’s a good Father that way” (1 Peter 1:6).
And so I do. I call out for little Joncee and for his mom and dad. I do it because the prayers of strangers and friends of friends changed my life when my own baby needed heaven’s hand.
I was once told that all the Christians in a certain prison, under the ministry of a friend, were bonded in prayer for my John. Something about those toughened men praying for a tiny boy they had never met worked its way into my soul.
The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
William Shakespeare
Even now, I set that memory on the table in moments when I feel alone. But still I sit, raw with grief, and try not to shake in fear and anger and ache.
Peter understood the struggle. Jesus asked him over and over, for reasons known only to Jesus and perhaps to Peter, “Do you love me?”
Dumbfounded, Peter finally said, “Master, you know everything there is to know. You’ve got to know that I love you.”
Jesus tells Peter that his life will end in great suffering. “So follow me.”
Peter flails. He’s trying to make sense—or make peace. He wants to know what’s going to happen to his friend John.
Jesus doesn’t indulge him. “If I want him to live until I come again, what’s that to you?” (John 21:22).
This is a moment of absolute clarity.
This same Peter is the one who later, in hard-won wisdom, says, “Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God.” I listen when Peter talks. He knows what it’s like to meet Christ, to talk with him on the beach beside a crackling fire, to tear into piping hot fish prepared by his friend and Savior. How much Peter must have loved that bright morning.
Peter seems to understand what it’s like to be me. He says, “You never saw him, yet you love him. You still don’t see him, yet you trust him—with laughter and singing. Because you kept on believing, you’ll get what you’re looking forward to: total salvation” (1 Peter 1:8–9).
Life healed and whole.
But still. In the meantime.
How in God’s name are we to live through storms like these? How are we to live in God’s name?
Debbie has a special connection to Joncee. After a freak accident, Debbie has had a constant struggle with sight. Despite multiple surgeries, she has continuing eye problems—chronic pain, dizziness, infections, partial loss of sight. Her body can tolerate the medicine that dulls her pain for only two more months. She has no idea what is next or how the story will end.
No one does. I have a quote tacked on my bulletin board. Gilda Radner, the comedian who battled cancer and ultimately lost, said, “Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”
I want to find the ambiguity delicious. I know it can be. Each of us is called to be part of a story whose end is life—healed and whole.
But still.
Today the hailstones are as big as cantaloupes, and clouds stretch across the horizon. Help your children, Father. Save us.
to ponder
Are there stormy situations in your life that are causing you to live in the meantime? If so, what are they?
How have you coped with the ambiguity of seemingly unanswered prayers or prolonged suffering?
Pelted
Frozen raindrops
And whirling winds
Make globes of ice
That fall and spin
Between the Black and
Caspian Seas—
Over Great Plains,
And now,
On me.
You pelt me,
And I run for cover.
It feels like you’ve been spurned
By an unresponsive lover.
And I,
The innocent passerby,
Am left here,
With you,
An angry sky.
little raindrops
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain.
T.S. Eliot
Today the chestnut tree outside Anne Frank’s attic window will be cut down. The tree, which sprouted a century and a half ago, has been badly damaged by fungus and moths. On February 23, 1944, Anne wrote this in her journal:
From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the sea gulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. As long as this exists, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies—while this lasts I cannot be unhappy. (The Diary of a Young Girl, 1952)
Anne, confined for over two years in her indoor hiding place, died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp one year later.
Seattle is covered in chestnut trees, their bare branches reach to the gray sky and drip with silvery drops of rain. I gaze out my window at the double of Anne’s symbol of happiness and reach unsuccessfully for that response inside myself. I am reminded instead of Shakespeare’s “boughs which shake against the cold, / Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang” in his seventy-third sonnet.
It is Thanksgiving week. Even amid bare branches, I know that I have cause to celebrate their fruit. During our morning commute, my boys and I take on the task of naming things we are thankful for that begin with each letter of the alphabet in succession. We begin our list with airplanes that take us on adventures, balloons in the shape of pirate swords, chocolate everything, Douglas (a school friend), elephants—we can’t think of a really good answer for “E” this early in the morning—and then we get to “F.”
John, my third grader, says “Freedom,” and I’m impressed in the easy way mothers are with the insights of our own children. I’m also a bit ashamed; I was thinking of “feathers.” John explains to his little brother that in some places, people aren’t allowed to worship God, that they have to hide scraps of paper with Bible verses on them just to learn about him. Jackson is stunned and intrigued. Secrets and sneaking and super-secret spy activities are popular pastimes for John and Jackson.
I thought of the patronizing glances and nervous interactions I had with a group of people recently after being transparent about my faith. Seattle is a pretty secular city, but my thoughts weren’t about the attitudes of my companions—they were about me, about how disappointed I was that my hands began to tremble ever so slightly. About how anxiety corrupted my clarity, making me less articulate than I really am. About how I felt small and scared.
Stealth is great if you’re a kid playing a game of super-secret spies. But stealth in the midst of freedom feels like anti-gratitude. God may be a stealthy God, working quietly behind the scenes in unseen and subtle ways. Jesus was constantly commanding people he healed not to tell anyone what had happened. God’s not in the PR business.
But God’s people? I’m not sure God asks me, anywhere, to be self-protective, tentative, socially savvy.
Anne Frank stayed hidden for the most serious reason imaginable—to stay alive. Confined, lacking all freedom, she looked for happiness in something as small as a drop of rain, silvered by the sky and clinging to a bare chestnut branch.
That’s the kind of smallness I want. Not a small voice, but a choice to see the small, shimmering clues of God’s presence that are all around me. This is work requiring total attention, ignoring the forest to see each tree as a test
ament. While this lasts, I cannot be unhappy.
to ponder
Have you ever been in a situation where you felt yourself allowing your voice to be small out of fear? What do you need to allow yourself to say, even if you might feel afraid?
When have you experienced deep gratitude by attending mindfully to even the small blessings in your life? What is one specific thing you feel thankful for now?