The Rains Came

Job 21:18 “They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carrieth away.”

The Rains Came…

Throughout April we had a lot of rain. Endless days of clouds, drizzle, cold, and darkness lay over the land. We even had snow late in the season, which is usually rare, but the way the weather has been for the past couple of years, I guess it is the new normal.

Lucky for me, I have a flurry of friends who lift my spirits on a daily basis, except when I’m in a withdrawn mood and have no contact, then I’m left on my own with the elements I’m dealt.

I like to switch things up so my daily exercise routine doesn’t become mundane and boring. I had to make the switch of having my stationary bike being brought from the basement and I placed my Health Rider down there for Adam. Since the rains came and put a damper on my daily walks, my bike has been a blessing. 

I still do my twenty-minute walks when the weather allows but when it doesn’t I hop on my bike. The other day I pulled the mower out thinking I’d do twenty minutes but I wound up out there for an hour. The weight-loss and workout does wonders for my arthritic knees. 

When my M-I-L gave us the bike eight years ago when we moved to Nebraska, it was placed in the basement. Hubby, when blind, used to go down there daily to break up his days that were filled with darkness. I bought a Health Rider at a garage sale for twenty-five bucks and that was my nice piece of equipment for me before arthritis set into my bones.

Doing all the research that I am, exercise is an important part of my healing. I didn’t know how detrimental something as simple as a cold was to me so my walks on the cold, blustery days came to a halt. Inside equipment was going to become a new part of my daily routine in my healing.

Then there’s the sun, another pivotal portion of my healing since it holds non-fabricated vitamin D! I have obtained a supplement also but the sun, that which I can’t control was what I needed. Not only for the warmth and lifter upper elements it carried, but the nutritional value people often take for granted.

The rains came…along with that, days on end of no sun. That alone is enough to drag you into the trenches of a depressed state. March and April were so filled with ominous clouds and winds, my spirit was being put through a whirlwind as if I was in the center of a tornado being sucked through the vortex drinking in all of my energy. 

May has allowed a couple of warm days, some sun with no winds; a couple of days, not a lot. Again, the storms and rains have washed over the fields and this month we’ll see once again (as in April) record low temperatures and a lot of rain.

As in life, storms come and storms go but what normally happens after a storm is the sun comes out in all its brilliance and shines allowing a rainbow to pan across the sky. Since this diagnosis, I’ve seen rainbows in the darkened clouds, swirling in the winds, and vaporized in every breath.

Is that normal? Scientifically people will say you need the sun’s reflection to create a rainbow, but let me ask you this, has anything that has happened in the storms of your life been explained by science? Do we really live so science can define us?

When I was diagnosed I had four doctors (yes four) ask me the questions they ask all victims of this disease. They were looking for the ‘normal’ symptoms, none of which I had. They looked perplexed, scratched their heads with furrowed eyebrows and said, Hmm… interesting. 

Pss. 83:15 “So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm.”

Again, when I was not ‘committing’ to their way of doing things, they looked perplexed. Their science was telling them that there is only ONE way to go and this woman is NOT committing to our way of doing things. They threw fear around like putting candy in a child’s bag on Halloween, toss it here, toss it there, these kids love their candy, note: handing them the disease! But the thing was, I didn’t like the candy they offered.

Back in Texas when my son was little, we would take him trick-or-treating. I didn’t believe in having a child beg for candy, but all of his friends were doing it, so being a homeschooled kid, we took him. When he got home he’d go through the candy and pick out what he wanted. He’d pause a few times when there was a small bag with a note attached. The note would have a Bible verse printed. I had never seen this before but then again, I didn’t do the Halloween thing but I thought it was a great idea that this dark holiday had one ray of Light in the evening. 

Do you see where I’m going with this? In the darkness of the dismal diagnosis, I SAW THE LIGHT! Instead of seeing it as a raging storm, I saw it as an offering of Light. This was a time to heal, to change and to grow! No one said a change was easy and quite often it will be one of the most difficult tasks in your life. Change is necessary to grow!  But if you never weather the storms of life and see rainbows, you are committing yourself to stagnation of an over-flowing society based on science. 

God is not science. He does not exist to be proven, He exists to be felt, known and loved. My God is not a God of confusion and perplexity, He is a God of certainty, surety, a solid rock! So when men and women of science ask me to commit to their way of doing things I have to stand firm and declare my faith to be based on Solid Ground, not sinking sand. Let the rains come, let the storms rage, let the winds blow and let the dust move. Me…I’m standing on solid ground. All praise and Glory to Him! 

Isa. 4:6 “And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.”