I sit here waiting for a tropical storm to make its presence known sometime in the next hour or so. We need the rain, but in this area of the country, there is a fine line between getting a solid soak and getting a solid flood.
I’ve always loved the rain though. I relax as the skies darken and the trees begin to rustle and sway in the wind. I love to lay in bed listening to the countless droplets pelt the roof as the thunder grumbles all around me.
I am waiting. Waiting for the rain. Waiting for the calm it gives me. Waiting for the white noise to drown out the concerns circling my mind and praying for it to clear away my fears, my doubts, and my worries.
I find myself waiting for so much lately, but a wiser part of my soul recognizes what I’m missing whenever I get lost in this pattern of waiting. I’m missing the joy in what is because I’m so focused on what will be. And someday, whenever those other moments come – those moments for which I have – I know that the waiting will just shift to something else.
I go over checklists in my mind. I run through activity after activity after activity that needs to be completed. I cross off ten items and twenty more take their place. It’s a list that will continue to grow until I learn how to release it.
Life is meant to be appreciated, not completed and checked off. Right now, I feel like I’m missing so much of it. I don’t always feel this way. I don’t usually feel this way.
But for now, for tonight, I wait for the rain.
Momentum of Joy 