Hail and dam
Fri, 2015-05-15 05:00
News Staff
It’s raining. Now, I like rain. A lot. It’s peaceful and useful, and the sound of the pitter-pitpaton the roof makesme feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and I want to curl up with a book, a soft blanket, and a hot cup of herbal tea. I know. I’m the coffee girl. But something about rain and books just seems so . . . literary. And tea seems to go with the literary theme so well . . . Okay. I’ll probably
drink coffee, but for the sake of the Norman Rockwell picture in my mind, can we just pretend it’s tea? Thank you. Right now, I’m sitting in my recliner with my feet propped up, listening to water ping against the window and typing this to you. Moses, my literary assistant goofy dog is curled up in the chair next to me, snoozing away. He does that a lot. I need to pay him less. I’m tempted to complain, though. It’s been raining for days. No, weeks. It’s muddy. My garden is waterlogged. And I still have several trays of flowers that need planting. I kinda want a little sunshine.
But I’m not going to complain. No, sirree. We need this rain. Our part of the world has been waaaay too dry, for waaaay too long. The ground has soaked up these spring storms like last year’s driedout kitchen sponge. Slurp, slurp, slurp. And the soft, soothing sound must be doing something to my spirit, because I’m getting all nostalgic and sappy and spiritual. But honestly, the
rains are a valid parallel to God’s grace in my life, over the past few years. And my spirit, once parched and brick-hard, has slurpedup that grace until my soul feels all fat and squishy again. And the grace-rain keeps coming, flowing off my head and arms, dripping down my back, making sloshy puddles at my feet. Puddles perfect for splashing in. Too sappy? Maybe. But it’s true. Our lives
are made up of seasons, and it seemed like my summer-drought lasted for a couple of centuries. Depleted became my normal . . . and I forgot that seasons change. So when God began raining
down his grace on me, for a while it felt more like a hailstorm, beating against a dam. Hail and dam. (See? I can be edgy.) I might have been tempted to complain, simply because my normal was
disrupted. Even though normal was pretty awful . . . it was all mine. And it was familiar. But now, the dry places in my life are saturated. The brick-hard parts of my spirit are soft and supple. And I
have plenty of puddles to splash around in. In other words, the drought didn’tlast forever. I could have chosen to stay in that drought, though. I could have resisted His grace, because it felt unfamiliar. I’d forgotten what the rain felt like. From now on, when it seems like God’s doing something new and different, I’m not going to resist. At least, I’m going to try not to resist. What feels at first like hailstones hammering my soul may just turn out to be a flood of grace. “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus,” 1 Timothy 1:14. Find Renae’s latest humor book, The Breaking Point, at Amazon.com, orconnect with her at www.RenaeBrumbaugh. com .