Surrender to Life and Dance in the Rain

Thunderstorms, rain, lightning, rivulets of water run down the driveway. Dogs panting, nervous, sitting on my lap. Mornings that dawn slowly, light barely able to take back the day. Days like this make me forget what the sun can bring. I prefer sunshine and calm skies.

Rain hammers against the house, let me in, let me in, it repeats. I will not be denied or ignored, it seems to holler at me. I close windows to keep it out but it beats against them in a constant reminder that nobody can say no to the rain. It falls when it chooses and ignores you when it wants. You are not the master — I am, each powerful lightning bolt reminds me.

Tame the weather? It’s simply not possible and as mankind invades the earth’s natural rhythms and the way of life, as we encroach upon the normal cycle of growth and distort rivers, handcuff their flow, divert their hearts, poison the ground and choke the sky, the weather pushes back with more vigor and vengeance trying to get our attention. We are not who we think we are. We are not gods who can control the earth and the rhythm of life. We are part of the earth and the angry thunder demands to know why we insist on hurting ourselves.

When we deplete the resources of our bodies it retaliates with pain and exhaustion. When we abuse the earth it cries out in anguish and sorrow, beating against its chest, imploring us to see. Nature and us, we are not separate; we are life. We live in it and every part of life is destined to touch and serve other lives. Every ripple touches someone and something.

There is a purpose to everything under the sun. Every aborted child or abandoned dream impacts the world in countless, unknown and unnamable ways, ripples lapping against the far edges of another’s life. Our actions have an impact on life. They always do. Spraying our lawns with chemicals and speaking rudely on Facebook matter too. More than we want to know.

I suppose the word reverence belongs here. Philosopher Paul Woodruff defines reverence as “the virtue that keeps people from trying to act like gods.”

With that knowledge comes accountability, responsibility, awareness. When we are aware we are called to respond. Every response, or lack thereof, moves us in tune or out of tune with life.

Life flows, the natural cadence is preset from the creation of time. We can choose how to enter in, how to live and love in response to it. The rain beats against us feeling intrusive and unwelcome or it falls upon us as life-giving if we receive it with grace.

“Some people dance in the rain others just get wet.” Roger Miller.

This was not the life I had pictured and planned for when I was pregnant with my first son, and I was well aware that the cards I had been dealt could not be exchanged for a different hand.

The baby showers and sage mother advice about enjoying each season of baby and toddlerhood because “they grow up so fast” had done nothing to prepare me for this.

There wasn’t a chapter in the pregnant mother’s bible, What to Expect When You’re Expecting that said what to do when your newborn was diagnosed with a chronic, incurable illness.

There were no stickers in the first year of life memory book that would mark our son’s firsts in life: baby’s first IV, first biopsy, first anaphylactic attack. Life was flowing a way I didn’t understand or expect.

I had the choice to resist or adjust my expectations, to flow the way it was going or let the weight of it all crush me. Every step felt like a hurdle, wading through quicksand, running sprints exhausted from no sleep.

Every decision was monumental. A fever brought on a domino of decision making and changed plans: call the doctor, head to the emergency room, pack a bag, plan for the dog, cancel any hoped-for plans, call someone to contact the rest of the family, shove down the tears — they would not help right now — and bury those dashed expectations that last time was not the last time you had prayed for — there was going to be another hospital stay, another unanswered prayer.

Emotions rage and threaten to overtake but I can’t give in or process, only one thing matters — my son needs IV antibiotics sooner rather than later to staunch the damage to his already compromised liver. Everything else fades to black. Get him to the ER, that is my only direction. The storm is taking me where it wants to go and I am helpless in its wake.

Paula D’arcy tells us in Waking Up to This Day, that life moves where it wants to move, like water rushing through dry creek beds and roadside gullies. “Move the way life is moving…move with life, not against it,” she advises.

Our prosperity-driven culture and religion teach otherwise. Mark out your path, go for it, make it happen, accept nothing less than what you deserve, the self-help experts teach. Religion seeks to know why, to look for answers caged in prayer, to determine the best formula that will yield a change in God’s plans or a derailing of life’s detours. Books on how to pray or how to pray effectively abound and Pinterest promises me five easy to steps to getting all my prayers answered. It’s deceptively similar to the grandiose ideas we have when we try to tame nature.

Designed to be self-help mantras and motivating support systems, these directives can blow up in our faces when life refuses to cooperate.

When I push against what is I make everything harder than it has to be.

Aligning myself with what is, even when I don’t like it or understand it, may allow me room to breathe and see that only this one moment matters and taking life in moments allows God to walk with me.

How I breathe through the next moment is like flowing with the river and accepting the rain when I had hoped for sunshine.

Jesus appeared to Saul and asked him why he kicked against the goads. In other words, Saul, why are you fighting against the way life wants to take you?

We like to think we are different from Saul, we cooperate with God and life, don’t we? But our human focus is narrow. It says I want, I need, THIS is how I want it and anything different than that plan means something is wrong and must be corrected, adjusted, or eliminated. Something went awry and must be rerouted.

Have you ever tried paddling upstream, against the river’s current? Resisting what IS in life is a lot like that, leaving us exhausted and powerless and defeated.

Surrender feels like defeat to our egos; we are programmed to fight and change what is into what we want it to be, but I remember the instructions when we were whitewater rafting in West Virginia. The rivermen — as they are called — were experienced and well trained, but they thoroughly prepared us for all possibilities. If we fell out of the raft we were instructed to relax and let the current take us. We would end up in an eddy or pool of water where they would pick us up downstream. Trying to fight the current was impossible and senseless. Relax, you have a life preserver on, let go and we’ll see you downstream, they reminded us.

The river is going to take you whether you want to go or not.

We get to choose every day, co-exist, resist, or be one with life. As for me I’ve spent too long dodging raindrops, tiptoeing my way around puddles, and hiding from the night skies. I’ve been overwhelmed by high waves and fearful of walking in the dark.

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. — Galileo

I think it’s time for me to stop pushing life aside as I move through it, living as though the things of life are obstacles in my way forward to real life. I’ve lived as if the rain or the sick baby were interruptions to my life and work, but as Henri Nouwen reminds me, those things were and are my life and my work.

“My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted until I discovered the interruptions were my work.” Henri Nouwen

It’s time for me to feel the rain and not run from it, to lift my face to the dark sky and let it wrap itself around me instead of hiding from it because it makes me feel vulnerable and small.

It’s time for me to listen to what the thunder has to say instead of interpreting it as anger or disapproval. As Creig Kippin reminds us, “You will see the world in what you carry in your heart.” I’d like to stop carrying the things that hold me captive to the illusion that I am in control, must be in control, or can be in control of life.

We interpret life through the lens of expectation. All life moves in harmony with a single power. Nature never violates this rhythm, but human beings do. Our fears and oppositions to life take us further away from the source that sustains us. Unable to name and touch that source, we think we can control or change it.

All our struggles are no more than thinking we can catch the wind or tell the rains to stop. In a very dramatic illustration of this, the ancient book of Job reminds us that we’re not in control, that life is larger than our place in it.

God asks Job,

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4a, MSG),

“And have you ever ordered Morning, ‘Get up!’? told Dawn, ‘Get to work!’”? (38:12)

“Can you get the attention of the clouds, and commission a shower of rain? Can you take charge of the lightning bolts and have them report to you for orders?” (38:34–35)

Answering these questions for ourselves brings us into a right perspective with life.

“…reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self — something that is beyond human creation or control, that transcends full human understanding.” Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World.

The river is beyond our control, it’s power is not something a human can manage or tame. Life, even though we deceive ourselves otherwise, is beyond our control as well. My life preserver fastened, I’m ready to relax and let the river take me where it wants.