Me and George Bailey

I love the rain. When I was a very little girl I used to go out on our sunporch and lie on an old couch when it would rain. I would lie there all by myself and look out the windows at the muted sky and listen to the sound of the rain hitting the leaves on all the trees surrounding our house and on the roof and windows of our sunporch. It made me feel safe and surrounded by God.

As a teenager, I would sit at my bedroom window when it rained and look out over the farmland that stretched out past our house and breathe in the scent of rain on the fields–an earthy, sweet, mineral aroma that would fill me with calm and peace.

When I moved to NYC for college I loved it so much I stayed through the summers every year. And I quickly learned that summer storms in NYC are something to behold! They sweep in dramatically, darkening the sky with eggplant colored clouds and dump billions of giant raindrops all over the city. I always think God is trying to scrub the streets clean. People run for cover (because umbrellas are useless) and stand under awnings and scaffoldings forever, waiting for the rain to pass. One summer I got a job as the receptionist for a production company in Soho. And one day when I went out for lunch, a summer storm rolled in. I laughed at all the people hiding from the rain, and they rolled their eyes at me as I marched around the streets, turning my face up to the sky to get the maximum amount of wet. When I went back to work I had to sit at my desk dripping and shivering in the air conditioning, clutching a mug of hot water for warmth for the rest of the day while everyone who came in the office felt sorry for me for “getting caught” in the rain. Only after the 4th or 5th time that happened did they realize I was deliberately getting drenched. I got a stern talking to by my boss and *tried* not to do it again.

Spring rains are beautiful too. Light and misty, they soften and quiet the atmosphere. My apartment is on the ground floor of my building and has big windows that look out on a little garden. One of my favorite memories from Rahul’s early days with me was a string of rainy Saturdays we spent playing games sitting on the couch. The rain fell softly outside, hitting the leaves surrounding our building and I remember feeling really nourished. Like the rain was nourishing the ground and everything growing out if it, I felt like God was nourishing me with this amazing child, who was normally so frenetic, now sitting calmly with me playing games, listening to the rain.

It’s Spring now, and lately Rahul and I have been having these deep late-night talks about God. He is so wise and his life experiences have been so different than mine that his perspective on difficult and mysterious spiritual topics is really illuminating. He has answered a lot of the questions for himself that most people spend their whole lives wondering about and won’t flinch or hesitate if you ask him why God allows painful things to happen to us, or why some people seem to have an easier life than others. These are topics he has wrestled with in his own faith journey and has resolved with confidence. We sit together at night, often while he is giving me a foot rub or I am giving him a facial. (You have your Family Movie Nights, we have Family Spa Nights–don’t judge!) And I ask him my deep questions.

“Why is my friend, who has experienced heartbreaking and devastating loss, one of the most cheerful and grateful people I’ve ever met?” “Because when you hit the bottom of the well you can either choose to stay there and live in grief and darkness for the rest of your life or you can look up and choose to live your life grateful for every day. It’s God’s way of showing that He is in charge–by taking something devastating and transforming it into something life-affirming and hopeful.”

“Why does Jesus teach us that we only we need a mustard seed of faith to move a mountain?” “Because God already did all the work for us to be close to Him and He wanted to make it easy for us to have faith that our prayers are powerful. It’s an illustration that reminds us how little we need to do.”

Lately it feels like the battle of my life to just believe that God will give me what I’m asking for in prayer. Rahul reminded me how “easy” faith can be. Just by looking at the man he is now affirms my faith. I’ve seen him change so dramatically over the years in lots of ways, including his faith in God. He did not believe that God existed for most of his childhood. I never tried to force my beliefs on him, but by being around me all the time he did absorb a little bit of my faith. Mostly he argued with me about it. But sometimes he attempted to imitate what he saw in me. When I was sharing with him my struggle to believe that God would answer my prayer he reminded me of an experience that he had when he was little that I had forgotten about.

We were driving to Brooklyn for some neuro-psych testing he was having done and it was a long drive. It was raining and I told him one of my favorite stories in the Bible about rain. Elijah was a prophet in Israel during a particularly Godless time. He prayed earnestly that it would stop raining and lo and behold, it stopped raining and there was a drought. Then after a few years he prayed again and the heavens opened up, it rained and the drought was over. There were various reasons Elijah did this, but one was to teach us that the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Rahul loved the idea that a man could control the rain and he quietly tried it out as we were driving. He would silently pray that it would rain and moments later I’d be turning on the windshield wipers. Then he’d pray it would stop and off they would go. Over and over he did this until we arrived in Brooklyn and he announced to me that he had just controlled the rain all the way there! This experience was formative for his faith as he began to understand that God hears us when we pray and loves to answer even our weird rain-based requests if it will help us believe in Him. When he reminded me of it the other day it really moved me. Here was Rahul’s mustard seed of faith that moved his mountain of doubt and anger and disbelief and created this super-deep, spiritual, faithful man.

It’s supposed to rain the rest of the week, and I’m going to try to let every raindrop that hits me on the head remind me how easy faith can be.

Rahul running his heart out in the rain