The Rain

The rain is strangely soothing. When it pours, you can't do anything. All you can do is listen to it - and that is all you need to do.

I'm in the midst of much transition. Some of my readers may notice that I've entirely changed my blog (this happens each time I move). Instead of moving across the ocean, I'm moving down the coast of the eastern U.S., into the heart of D.C. It's what I've always wanted - but this is not exactly how I'd imagined it coming about.

As a young, bright, and naive political science major fresh out of college, I knew that the heart of the political pulse of America is D.C. and that one day, if I hoped to change the world in a "social action" way, I would live there. I still carry what that education taught me (plus a grad degree now); but I'm coming as the servant of something much larger than my own ego or dreams or definitions of "change" I'd learned in those classes. I'm much more sobered and balanced; and God knew I wouldn't have done any good moving to D.C. back then.

The dreams I dreamed then though were not only real, but many have been and are definitely being answered in much larger ways than I realize. Working for FOCUS has healed so many things that I never dared to pray would get better. But when our boss told us (me and Kendra) in January that our jobs were being cut after August for financial reasons, I could see that God was putting something new into motion. I still don't fully understand what or why this happening. I can barely imagine what this move will bring. Like a steady rain storm that drowns out all other sound but the pelting of precipitation, New Haven brought me to a point in which I stopped all the "activity" that had been filling my life, and I sat immovably fixed inside the well of God's resources for awhile, shoring up valuable resources until the time He chose for the skies to clear.

Well, in a way they have. Restoration surely happened and I'm eager to burst out of the gates and figure out what this new season is all about. But this rain storm reminds me that there is a flood of resources and peace abounding, which I tend to forget on bright and sunny days.

I grieve the loss of doing ministry in the New England Boarding Schools (NEBS). I tremble at the responsibilities ahead in the Greater Washington Area (GWA). I hope God comes and brings a rain storm once in awhile and I have a strong hunch, He will.