When the rain comes…

When the pandemic restrictions began in the spring of 2020, I became overwhelmed with a desire to be walking outside. Devoid of the ability to gather with others, I found my companionship in the company of waves, in the conversations with birds on trails, and in the comfort of water bubbling over river stones.

But when summer passed and fall faded away, winter marched in with hard rains. A simple walk around the neighborhood required such preparation against the rain, wind, and cold that I became starved for the solace nature brought me.

Waiting for winter to give up its assault, my spirit hungered for release from the suffocating rain. And during this time, my attention was focused on the rose bush resting in a clay pot on our back deck. When the rain weakened and a semblance of warmth periodically appeared, I searched its thorny stalk as leaves appeared and spread.

Waiting for the bloom to reveal itself was a master class in patience. That bud lingered, teasing me with its promised beauty, revealing only a millimeter of change at a time. When it finally flirted with a skirt of pink, it was Claire de Lune expressed in color, and it made a distant memory of the seven months of constant rain.

At least it used to, until the anticipation of another onslaught of winter sent us here to the Southwest.

I am finding that here in this Sonoran Desert, the incessant rain, which once filled me with dread, now fills me with joyful anticipation.

Though most of the year this barren landscape wears forbidding skins that poke and prod, the monsoon rains transform the desert overnight into something soft and beautiful.

When the rains arrive with an army of thunderheads, the desert becomes the finale of the 1812 Overture. Like a Fourth of July celebration, color explodes overnight, sometimes within moments. No patience is required for the bloom to unfold here.

In fact, the rains soak the landscape into improbable beauty. A quail family skitters through a puddle after a downpour. An anthill mound pummeled in monsoon rain becomes a perfectly sculpted sandcastle. A barren landscape becomes a carpet of velvety green, and jackrabbits skitter through the bushes.

Now the rain beckons me outside to experience wonder, and perhaps that is why I have fallen in love with this desert place.

Sadly, monsoon season is coming to a close here, and I will mourn the loss of the towering thunderheads and the vagaries of the rain. The desert will lose its bloom, and the grasses will fade. The air will cool and dry, and perhaps, if lucky, decorate the landscape with a soft, frosty cover on some cold morning.

But until then, I will quietly cling to this unfolding explosion of desert color as passionately as I once did the unfolding rose.

It is not that patience is not needed here. It is just a new kind of waiting is needed…a waiting through the long dry season for the abundance of monsoon rains to explode on the parched land.

Perhaps it is why I have come to love this desert land. The desert’s rhythms seem to more closely resemble my own life’s journey… extended periods of barrenness and drought interrupted by short seasons of inexplicable beauty and joy.

From both sides now…

Rows and flows of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere - I’ve looked at clouds that way… Joni Mitchell

Often alone as a young girl, when sent on a family errand, I would take the dirt path that cut across a large field of grass, dissecting it into two raggedy triangles. Gusts of wind would create pattens in the grass that kept me spellbound, and I sometimes would wander off the beaten path to lie down in the waves of living grasses.

Hidden from sight, at least in my mind, I would watch clouds push and shove their way into shapes in the inconsistent wind as grasses teased across my vision. Was it an elephant or a dog with a bone? A unicorn or a tower? A crouching tiger or a volcano?

A strange peace always settled over me in those moments.

I was alone and yet not alone.

When the clouds would separate in their race across the sky, sometimes a hole would open up and reveal a brilliant ray of sun which would illuminate the cloud edges. Too young to understand the thought, I knew I was seeing heaven, and I felt God’s presence somehow in the deep recesses of my heart.

Those “cloud illusions” sustained me. Though life produced its more than fair share of tragedy, somehow I never lost the kinship of those clouds nor felt disillusionment in their presence.

So when social media came alive with footage of Joni Mitchell in her recent hauntingly poignant performance of “Both Sides Now,” I reread the lyrics to her song that had so touched me and so many others in our formative years.

Reading them, I was surprised at the depth of the melancholy expressed there in her musing about the illusions of clouds, of love and of life. Even when young, those sentiments did not resonate with me. In my youthful arrogance, I thought I did know much of love and of life, though there was little evidence in my life to prove it.

I learned early that glittery, fairy tale Love, like the wind waves in the grasses, was an illusion. But love, the stuff of hard work, of chiseling raw stone into something solid and good, that was heaven revealed in gilded cloud edges.

That kind of love didn’t pretend or protect. That kind of love was willing to wear its skin on the outside. That kind of love challenged the belief that “if you care, don't let them know. Don't give yourself away.“

Because the truth was, for me, the only way to find love, was to do the opposite:

Give yourself away.

Over and over again.

For all of your life.

In this seventh decade of my own life, now settled into a new Sonoran desert home, the monsoon season is in full swing. The daily appearance of ever shifting clouds as storms gather holds me spellbound with the same anticipation as it did for the young girl in the field of waving grass. I am still looking for the Light to break through the clouds.

Ah, Joni, it is not a cloud illusion at all.

From both sides, lo these many years - from up and down, from win or lose - it is not the illusion of clouds, not the illusion of love and not the illusion of life that propels me forward. It is the reality of light breaking through a shifting pattern of clouds. It is love experienced in feast and in famine. And it is life made richer by saying, “I love you, right out loud,” withholding nothing and giving away everything.

“When the music fades, and all is stripped away…”

Moving to a new destination is more than just a change of address. It is more than just sorting through possessions to determine what is worth moving. It is more than just painful partings with family and friends.

Moving is a demolition project to discover what is to be found in the foundation of ourselves and what new construction will look like in the core of our beings.

Only the demolition project isn’t slow and methodical. It is a tornado that rips through our soul’s home leaving us disoriented on a barren landscape.

At least that is what it has been for me.

In the distractions of a well-worn life path, even in the difficulties of life, I have always known what to expect and what is expected of me. Thirty five years in a singular location framed who I was and how I was to be in almost every situation. There is a certain comfort in that.

But over the years, I began to feel like I had a host of “metaphorical outfits” in my closet, one for every occasion. And when I had to encounter the world, I would ask myself, “Who do I need to be in this situation?” putting on that self in order to fit in.

It is a skill honed in a complex and difficult family of origin that taught me to always look for land mines and do whatever I could to avoid an unexpected blast. When you grow up this way, being a chameleon becomes second nature. Anything to avoid the words that wound and the actions that scar.

Here in this new place there are no distractions or expectations. I live a tabula rasa life which is devoid of expectations but has also created new battle fields.

You see, I say I am a Holy Spirit led girl with my palms open, but here, when the Spirit leads me to an unexpected place, my first inclination has been to refuse the assignment - not graciously, I might add.

More often than not, I have to be dragged kicking and screaming into rigorous self-examination that gets to the core of who I am. It is not an easy process and definitely not for the faint of heart. And it is rarely a pretty picture.

Devoid of an established “outfit” to put on, I am left only with myself and, still so unsure of who that is, my skin feels raw and tender. I have met incredibly kind people who have embraced this unknown me, and yet I feel myself on guard, raising the quills on my spine for protection.

But I truly don’t want to be walled off. I don’t want to try and figure out who I need to be in order to fit in. I don’t want to live in fear and mistrust convinced an undiscovered mine lurks nearby.

I just want to be myself, whoever that is, and

“simply come, longing to express something that’s of worth….”

And what is my worth? What is my value if I come unclothed with nothing more than me? Who is that person when all is stripped away?

I have no answers, only suspicions. I suspect that I am clawing my way back to the person I was created to be. I suspect that I am going to have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable for awhile as I learn how to make peace with the sound of my own voice.

And I suspect, at the end of this process, that I will know more deeply what I have always known - that He who created me long before time loves me deeply and knows my worth even when I don’t.