The Great White Hope

The streams are swollen, the ground saturated, and I am soaked. The sky has unleashed its fury and I am it’s intended target. I am heavy with the water that floods the fibers of my clothes, and sticky with the heat that still clings to the air.

When it rains it pours.

The rain is a curious thing. It can be a mysterious mist that obscures what lies ahead, a welcomed refreshment on a hot summer’s day, or a torrent that ravages those in its path. It is the bringer of puddles and of floods. It gives life to the things that grow and washes away the grime from the air. Ever the double edged sword it can strengthen or lay low everything under it’s gaze, it rains on the just and the unjust.

Huddled inside and wet, I look out my window on the world and see it covered in gray; all the cheer has gone from the day and my mood has left with it. Satan is after me today and I can feel it. For days the bricks have been mounting, one after the other, after the other, after the other, after the other.

The rain comes from all sides, from the world, from the Church, from work, the drops keep pelting. As the clouds fill the sky, so too the gray funk fills my heart. I’ve deployed my usual tactics (here), but today I just cannot shake it. How many straws can you add to a camel’s back before it breaks?

I hate days like this.

I hate this feeling. I hate my humanity. I hate the flesh that I live in that I cannot always control my mood. I hate that sometimes I cannot let go of things and that I let people get to me.

It’s easier when you cut yourself off from the world, when you build the walls high enough that no one can see over and you don’t have to look out. I am tempted to close the blinds in my office so that I can shut out the day and pretend that it is not raining, to will myself into a more pleasant disposition.

Instead I step outside.

I close my eyes and I let the rain wash over me.

“Rain, rain on my face
It hasn’t stopped raining for days
My world is a flood
Slowly I become one with the mud

Chorus:

But if I can’t swim after forty days
And my mind is crushed by the thrashing waves
Lift me up so high that I cannot fall
Lift me up
Lift me up – when I’m falling
Lift me up – I’m weak and I’m dying
Lift me up – I need you to hold me
Lift me up – keep me from drowning again

Downpour on my soul
Splashing in the ocean, I’m losing control
Dark sky all around
I can’t feel my feet touching the ground

[chorus]

Calm the storms that drench my eyes
Dry the streams still flowing
Cast down all the waves of sin
And guilt that overthrow me

[chorus]

Lift me up – when I’m falling
Lift me up – I’m weak and I’m dying
Lift me up – I need you to hold me
Lift me up – keep me from drowning again”

And just when the rain seems that it will not relent, it slows and stops. Though the sky is dark and gray I see a white-ish spot where the son must be hiding and I am filled with hope. If not today, then perhaps tomorrow I will see its shining glow, and if not tomorrow then the day after.

Hope is a powerful thing.

Today I have hope, hope that tomorrow will be a brighter day, that despite all the storms, the sun on the other side will glow all the warmer.

I have hope, and for now, that will have to do.