I am singing, singing to the color of green!

After five weeks of excessive high temperatures and drought, each morning this week began with a gentle rain, giving life to the dead brown carpet under foot.  But this new color emerged in the coming of storms.

I was moaning this fact last week as I was driving with lightning, wind and thunder all around, planning an escape route from the hail! I cried, “We need rain, but do we have to have the storm?”

Surely there can be rain without a storm, but with the atmospheric conditions as they were, there was no other way.

Now there is flooding in our area.

Why can’t it be normal? What is normal anyway?  I live in a different kind of sameness than my friend Camille in Washington state.  For her, normal is rain most every day. She loves it when there is sunshine for a few days, and that is different for her. While in Denmark we were more accustomed to rainy cool days than bright sunshine.

In a matter of days, we  have gone from brown dead earth to vivid green and  a promise of flooding.

I am wondering if this is not how life is. Life seems to always be somewhere in the extreme.

Just when I think life is “normal”, there comes the storm–a pain, a sorrow, a tear, a broken relationship. Then comes healing, joy, laughter and reconciliation–

Always–moving from abnormal through the storm–to normal–for a moment.

I am discovering I must have the storm to focus, to prepare, to seek shelter, to watch–

These days of  continuous rain remind me that I need the slow, gentle soakings of His presence that come from sitting at His feet–an oasis in the sameness or the different. Most often, they come after a storm.

“Almighty God, Lord of the storm and of the calm, of day and night, of life and death; grant to me so to have my heart stayed upon your faithfulness, your unchangingness and love, that whatsoever betides me, I  may look upon you with untroubled eye.”  George Dawson in Little Book of Prayers