Making It Through The Rain

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life. - John Updike


INTO each life some rain must fall, some storms must pass through the dreary night, and laughter must give way to tears for a while.

Into each life some sorrow must creep in, and tribulation comes without warning – like heavy clouds weighing our spirit down, drowning us in a chasm of ambiguity and self-doubt. Darkness casts a long shadow in the ebb and flow of our existence, now and then descending to depths untold while grief unfolds, and our world just stops revolving.

Indeed, life’s cruel turns happen when we least expect them, catching us all too suddenly in a maze of hopelessness and misery, at times too deep and too brutal we don’t really know what hit us, and we can’t extricate ourselves from what we’re in no matter how hard we try.

A loved one passes away, material possessions go up in smoke, a relationship falls apart, a friendship disintegrates, a cherished dream crumbles, fortunes shift so swiftly causing us to lose not only our earthly belongings but our dignity as well, our pride and our self-respect, our sanity even, and our worth as individuals – and we struggle to cope with the dreadful reality confronting us in our face.

Surely as seasons change, upheavals beset us like the plague and our emotions become most vulnerable to the specter of loss, failure, defeat.

We suffer a death in the family and our grief is nearly immeasurable. A parent, a partner, a sibling, a relative, a close friend – their demise leaves an emptiness akin to a huge cavern with no discernible way out, and we desperately cling to memories here and there, weeping over things undone and words that would forever remain unsaid.

We endure the embarrassment of failure, of letting success slip away because of our own making, and we drift aimlessly in space for long stretches of wasted time. Chasing victory in vain can be utterly humiliating, mortifying, self-annihilating; and our beaten ego is beyond mending.

We bear the ignominy of defeat, of losing out in the game of love, life, living; and we are flustered beyond reckoning. Why me? Am I not good enough? Don’t I measure up? Someone else is worthier of one’s affection. Someone else deserves the room with a view. Someone else finished first at the race to the top. Someone else has painted the better, bigger picture. Someone else…

And so we stumble and fall into the mire of abject surrender. We flounder in a state of perpetual agony, of acute denial and senseless self-pity, and all for what? Are we any less of a person if we are only second best? Does that make us of inferior species if the one we love has left us for another? Do we label ourselves a loser if we get crushed in one battle when there are still many wars that lie in wait?

Like rain that nourishes a parched earth, so does suffering strengthen a beleaguered soul.

The weight of all our fears brings us to our knees in meek supplication, and we look up to the heavens for a reprieve, a respite, an unloading. We realize that we can after all seek solace from a Greater Power; that we can reach out, open our heart and cast our burdens upon The One who walks through life with us, if we only make the effort. That we can emerge from it scarred but unbroken, vanquished but unbowed, wiser but not sorry, emotionally toughened and spiritually enriched and physically ready to face the world again, through our own resolve.

Adversity teaches us a thing or two about the stuff we are made of that we didn’t know existed, and our capacity to overcome the odds that we didn’t know we possessed. It allows us to look within ourselves, deep down inside our often superficial selves, and by so doing, recognize where to draw strength and when to draw the line, where to find comfort and when to stop searching for answers, where to give vent and when to say enough is enough, life must go on…

For, indeed, life goes on whether we get back on our feet or stay stuck in our own cradle of nails and thorns. Sooner or later, another storm will pass our way anew and when it happens, are we prepared to steer our ship to safer waters? Do we set sail or do we take cover? Do we drop anchor or do we move on? Do we give in, back down, pull out – or do we hold on, stand firm, push through?

No matter, no one is to blame for the turmoil that we go through every so often in this cycle that we call life. There are no excuses, no alibis. No guarantees they won’t happen again, no reasons why. For as the poet Longfellow famously intoned a long time ago – thy fate is the common fate of all; into each life some rain must fall.