The Dear Wet of Rain

It has been a day blessed beyond measure or desert. I came into it so weary, and withal so tightly strung, that the extent to which it went well is nothing short of miraculous. All glory to God for this, and more on it later, but for now I want to tell you about something else God did for me.

I came home from this magnificent, exhausting day, and within an hour found myself helpless in the hands of the worst headache I've had for some time. It gripped my skull just above my eyes and stretched backwards, stabbing in with the careless, cruel, almost personal torture that these things have, as if a Chillingworth had got inside my brain and was amusing himself by slowly destroying it. I finally broke down and took ibuprofen, which is something I do not do at all as a rule because I don't want to become dependent on it for relief from my not-infrequent low-grade headaches.

I lay on the couch for two hours, trying to make it go away. It wasn't the pain (which remained manageable) so much as the persistence that vexed me. Nothing worked. Charity was having a party, and her friends came in and out. One of them, Sean, was looking for Juli. "I want to roll up her windows for her," he said. "It's raining."

"Thank God!" I replied, and followed him outside. I don't know exactly why I did it---but all at once the dear wet black velvet night was there around me, and the musical patterns of the rain fell gratefully on my ears. You who have been outside in the rain, you know that it is possible to breathe music. Merely to stand there was sweet relief, delicious and delicate. I abandoned myself to it, glorying in the drops wetting my wrists and fingers and the bridge of my nose, my throat and eyelids and chin and most of all my throbbing forehead. I turned my arms to catch the drops in the palm of each hand.

And oh, my feet were bare and they touched the wet ground, and oh, my clothes were dry and now they are speckled with dampness, and oh, the lovely cool unexpected wet of rain!---I never knew where the next drop would land, and for just a moment I wanted to laugh with delight at the thought that I was playing a sort of hide-and-seek game with God.

I remember, now that I am back here on the couch, how often when I was melancholy or sad at college I would go and lie down on a bench in the gazebo, if it was raining, and listen to the wet music. Sometimes I tried to trace melodies in it, but more often I simply accepted it as a murmuring symphony too complex to untangle, yet soothing beyond measure. When I see my Lord, I will ask Him, "Christus, Best Beloved, won't you teach me to speak rain?"

Is the headache gone? No. But my heart has gone beyond it, and all my senses are filled with the beauty of a soft late summer night of rain. Sweet gentle friend, Rain, carry my kiss of gratitude on the wind to Heaven, and tell my Best Beloved that I am thinking of Him tonight.