Rain

I first posted this on my MySpace blog on August 2, 2006 after a particularly violent rainstorm. The Lord has been blessing us with a good soaking for the past few hours. It has not been the dramatic production that is referred to below, but it is just as powerful a blessing to us right now. I hope you enjoy my thoughts on thunderstorms in the desert.


"It rained buckets on our desert lands yesterday. No watering the vegetable garden, no dust flying at the least provocation. We can rejoice in that. At least for a day or two.

I hated rain when we lived in our small coastal college town. It seemed like it would rain for weeks at a time, and it often did. Sure, it was refreshing, but the humidity...gah!

Then, we moved to our even smaller desert town. Dry, dry, dry. 30 percent humidity is high for here...you should hear the long-time locals complain.

But last night, the heavens opened in a huge production of lightening and ground-shaking thunder and it rained. It smacks the dust down where it lay and cements it to the dust beneath it. You would not believe how much cleaner the world is after a desert rain. Sure, there's mud on the carpet and the dogs stink like nothing you've smelled before, but outside, the earth just took a shower. It smells fresh without the dust smothering you with every breath.

Did you know that dust has a smell? Not 100 year old attic dust, but real every-day dust. I read once that 70 percent of house dust is dead skin cells. That's not the case here. Our dust is the ground rising up against us. It settles on everything, making me dust the furniture 3 or 4 times a week. This week, I'll only dust twice. Thank God for the rain.

You really don't appreciate things to the full extent until they are almost completely gone. If it never rained here, like in that town in Peru called Trujillo, we would just learn to live without it. You know that song, "You don't know what you got 'til its gone"? Sure, when something first leaves, you miss it. But in time, you forget that thing ever existed. That's how it is with rain and people and so many other things in life. It rains here JUST enough to make the people here FULLY appreciate its significance in life. In other words, we need to be with something just to that point at which we want it more. Otherwise, we take advantage of it. Stick that in your hat and think about it the next time you don't let your significant other head out with their buddies. You may be the one who gets taken advantage of, not the other way around."