Rain is not my favorite weather condition.
And the forecast calls for rain all week long. Yippee!
Yesterday, I stopped at target for a couple items and was instantly drawn to buy something from the dollar section… like happens every time I am in target. The marketing department must have read the forecast because they had a bunch of cheap, $5, kid-sized umbrellas available in vibrant colors.
So, of course, I bought three. I brought them home and placed them on my kitchen counter… and like moths to a flame, three little boys came straight for them. “Are these for us?” they all asked.
“Yes, but don’t touch them right now.” I said.
“But when?”
“When it’s raining.”
So, for them, the coming week of rain held much promise and excitement. A definite contrast to my dreary attitude.
This morning, I was scrolling through old photos and came across this one of my oldest in the rain. He loved the rain that day, the puddles and the mud and the promise of umbrellas. It made me think that I should pause and re-consider rain from their eyes instead of my weary, Monday morning ones.
This poem by Mary Oliver also helps:
“Last night the rain spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again in a new way on the earth!
That’s what it said as it dropped,
smelling of iron, and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing under a tree.
The tree was a tree with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves, at the moment,
at which moment my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain—
imagine! imagine!
the wild and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.”
How can you appreciate something anew today as you enter a new week?
How can you imagine the possibilities still ahead and greet them with wonder?
