Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on May 1, 2024
What a springtime we have had! As I write this, a gentle rain is falling outside on a world becoming almost too green to look at. I love watching the animals in a rain like this. Unconcerned, unbothered, unflapped. They don’t seek shelter, or hump up their backs against it, but just let it fall and go about their business. The grass seems to double its height every day, and I think I could sit and watch my garden grow. The pastures are vivid beneath last year’s cured grasses, and the hayfield is slowly coming back to life after being stripped by hail last summer.
The forecast looks promising for continued moisture. We have had inches of precipitation so far this year, mostly in the form of rain since we had a nearly snowless winter, but the funny thing is that I look back on the last month or two, and I don’t remember when it happened.
We have no trouble remembering storms. In a climate where we measure rainfall in hundredths of an inch, we care deeply about the storms. Winter or summer, springtime or fall, it doesn’t matter. We remember the summertime gully washers, the calf-killing blizzards, the deadly cold snaps, or the heat waves that spike a whole region into red flag warnings. We remember the fire-starting lightning storms, powerline-downing ice storms. We remember the washout that fills all the dams in three hours and the wild green-up afterwards. We remember the hail that devastates and destroys, and the subsequent work re-siding and re-shingling the house. We remember the massive storm that follows a prolonged and agonizing dry spell, wrenching us violently out of a drought and providing moisture for a hay crop when we thought it wouldn’t be possible.
Good or bad, we remember those things.
But we never remember the rain. Just the rain.
Funny, because of all the kinds of storms, of all the kinds of weather events that bring chaos and goodness and growth and blessing, the gentle drizzle is the best of the best. The rain that falls gently, not driven by wind, but straight-falling rain, hushing sweetly in the grasses, trickling quietly down the windows, dripping lazily from tree branches and running softly down the sodden gravel road, slowly – so, so slowly! – filling puddles and dams and soaking deep into the ground where it can actually do the most good.
The gentle drizzle. The good it provides it provides slowly.
We do the same with metaphorical storms as well. We remember the big events, whether they bring grief or blessing. We remember the deaths and births and marriages and the marriages falling apart. We remember the big promotions and the job losses.
But what about all the gentle drizzle of good things that fill in the gaps?
We remember relational storms as well. We remember being madly in love or desperately heartbroken. We remember feeling wildly loved and feeling devastatingly hurt. We remember the glittering engagement ring, the wedding (maybe), the honeymoon (maybe), and we remember each other’s failures.
But what about all the gentle drizzle of good things that fill in the gaps?
We remember spiritual storms as well. We remember dry spells so critical we felt our faith would break, or being in such a vicious storm we couldn’t see our way out of it. We remember droughts breaking in a cloudburst of certainty and joy, and all our dams of hope and faith and joy being filled up overnight.
But what about the gentle drizzle? The times when a gentle heavenly watering keeps the ephemeral springs trickling, keeping the dams full in a less spectacular way? The things that keep the grass green, and ripen the crops without flattening them? The things that keep the ground soft for working, rather than pouring out everything all at once and running off?
It is easy to see why we remember storms. Real ones and metaphorical. They’re showy. A lot happens in a short amount of time, both good and bad. We remember that sort of thing. We can’t be faulted for that, but we can be faulted that we don’t remember the rain. It takes work to remember it. It is a choice to remember it.
And we need to remember it.
Life isn’t made up of storms, although some people do seem to have more than their fair share of stormy happenings. Sometimes I think we look for storms as the answer to our problems, whether it is an actual meteorological drought, or a metaphorical drought. We, in a way, like the show of the lightning and the roll of the thunder and the downpour that is unmistakable, watching the dams fill up in a matter of hours. We also brace for storms, sometimes going through life expecting to get flattened by a microburst at any second.
But life isn’t sustained by storms. It doesn’t take a storm to bring change, and a lot of times the change that a storm brings is short-lived, doing much less good than a much less spectacular gentle rain.
Gentle rain…Those daily graces God pours out. The sustenance, even if it seems meager. The spiritual sustenance, the physical sustenance. Like the daily awaking next to a beloved though imperfect spouse, the shared morning routine, the shared meals and quiet companionship of faithful marriage. Like watching the day to day and year by year growth and change in a loved one, or in oneself. Like the hindsight awe of getting by, even if it was tough. Like comfort in loneliness, even if it is years of loneliness. Like all of the millions of little things that can easily be overlooked or taken for granted.
That’s what life is made of. So, remember the rain.
Song Dog Journal 