When Someone Else Needs Rain

St. Louis, Missouri, has some of the most extreme weather I have ever experienced. Spring, Summer, and Fall’s thunderstorms were terrifying. Straight-line winds often preceded by howling gusts that bent even the oldest oak trees over, accompanied the darkest black or grayish-green skies. Lightning, splintering the horizon, shook the earth as if it had no substance at all.

The winters were hardly any better. Bleak skies dominated the landscape, and even though we didn’t get the volume of snowfall we did when living in Massachusetts, the brutal temperatures of the season trumped all. I remember school being cancelled one day because the wind chill was double digits below zero.

So it is no wonder, when I was pregnant with my third child who was due in February, that I carried around worry when thinking about the possible scenarios of making the trip to the hospital.

The same held true when I fretted about how I would drive through the snow-bound countryside of Massachusetts to get my late husband—who had been placed on the heart transplant list in November—to the hospital forty minutes away should the gift of a heart become available. Worry jingled in my head like loose change in a pocket.

I didn’t need to carry those burdens though, for God provided. Both of those winters in comparison to seasons before, were almost balmy. No snow. No ice. No sixteen below. I remember warm gully-washing rain, the night my youngest was born; and standing coatless, that March in my Massachusetts front yard.

Middle Tennessee experienced record rainfall this past year. More days than not, have been gloomy, overcast, or pouring rain with the temperatures this winter making us feel as if we are in April instead of December. Most of us may have been yearning for a little bit of snow, but remembering back, made me wonder, who out there needed the blessing of this particular weather we had this past year.

The Bible tells us to hold each other in honor, placing one another’s need above our own. Could this trickle down into even our wishes for what the forecast might be?

As I start this new year, here’s what is taking shape in my heart and head:

• To stop grumbling, but to give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus. (See 1 Thessalonians 5:18.)
• For God’s will to be done, not mine. (See Matthew 6:9-13.)
• To put others needs before my own. (See Romans 15:2.)
• To not insist on my own way. (See 1 Corinthians 13:5.)
• To do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility to count others more significant than myself. (See Philippians 2:3-12.)

It takes a lot of energy to carry the weight of what we “know” is best, but when we release it to the Lord, He blesses us in ways we cannot conceive and blesses others in ways we may never know.

The song, Rain, by the group, Buffalo Rome, says it beautifully.

Much love for a Blessed New Year,
Kimberly