Heart Rain

Before a rain or a storm, a calm often sets in, before the rains starts.  And then, in time, the rain starts to fall – the bigger the storm, the bigger the rain.  As people, all of us have been through the storms of life – family difficulties, financial difficulties, sickness, or disease.  These storms rage, on the inside, with strong winds.  

Years ago my family adopted two precious children from Haiti, a brother and his biological sister.  During a recent storm, I looked at this sweet little girl, and I tried to see what she thinks, what she feels, what she hopes for, and what she dreams.  She is a real person with a real heart, and maybe like the outside today, it's raining, on her inside.  So I tried to see what clouds might be covering her skies, by my heart trying to dream her dreams, trying to see her rain.  And what did I see? 

I saw a little girl who was given away, not by strangers, but by her own family.  And then I saw pain, and then I saw her rain, still falling.  So what did I do?

Well thankfully, she is now mine, in my house, on a Sunday afternoon, talking, playing, and having fun.  But I know clouds still circle her heart, raining, even though she cannot yet understand heart weather patterns.  So I called her over to me, trying to see and feel and know her storm, from the radar of my own experience, sitting on a mountain a million miles away.  I called her to sit with me, and then I looked her directly in her eyes, with all the loving "Fatherhood" I could muster, and I said: "Melia, I am not going to break your heart!"  I spoke calmly and gently, with the exclamation point following my heart, not my words. 

And then the calm was broken, and her rain started falling, down her cheeks.  And as I held her, my rain started, falling down mine. 

We all experience the storms of life, some big and some small.  But in our darkest times (and we all have them), God wants us to know that he sees our pain, he sees our rain, and he catches our tears in a bottle.  God knows my clouds, he sees my rain, and he sees yours too.  So what does he want us to do?

God gave us the Bible as a lamp to our feet, and a light for our path (Psalm 119:105).  It says that, when we believe in Jesus the Messiah, we become adopted children (Ephesians 1:5), and we then are able to call God our Father (Romans 8:15).  Yes, God knows the pain and the rain that we live with every day.  He knows my daughter’s clouds, and he knows yours too. 

He wants us to trust Him, to believe in Messiah, and that everything will be okay.  If we follow Him, the clouds will part, and the rain will stop.