I saw that it was raining outside, so I opened the window. A contradictory impulse, perhaps, but one I nonetheless engaged in regularly. There is no weather more glorious than the rain; on Saturday I had returned from a retreat and was alone in my room trying on a new ballgown skirt that'd come in the mail, when all of a sudden a storm began. I immediately flung up the window sash and stuck half my body and a good portion of the billowing skirt out into the weather. The wind whipped my hair and my skirt and, framed by red brick, I looked absolutely glorious to the empty sidewalk below. "Rain," I thought to myself, "is a lovely thing."
Today's rain was different, though, different from any rain I could remember. Shafts of wet light fell from the sky, the sidewalk sprouted water spots, and the sun shone shadows. It was this last part that baffled me the most, for though the rain looked like sparkling spiderwebs stretching from heaven to earth and the earth seemed to dampen of its own accord, I found the collision of sun and rain to be the most extraordinary happening in the moment.
I continued to stare. The sun continued to shine, the rain continued to fall, and, I am told, though I'm not sure I believe it, the earth continued spinning past my window's opening.
But I was not involved in that madly spinning world, for as I sat still on my side of the sill, I saw in the open window a reflection of myself in the world outside.
College had seemed so odd up to now, and I"d been unable to figure it out. Why were friend situations so bad but seemed about to turn good and school so good but seemed about to turn bad and my family absent but I wished they were present and negativity so present but I wished it would be absent and I knew why life was different but I didn't know how to adapt to this change.
But God opened my eyes when I opened that window. In an experience completely new to me, rainfall and sunshine peacefully coexisted.
In my life till then, I had seen only sun or rain, times were black or white. Here, they collided, however. Yet they did not mix to gray, because the Sun shone light.
I knew that life needed balance, but here the Creator had visually played it out for me, letting me visualize what I already was and would continue to be experiencing. He'd shown me what I hadn't seen before and encouraged me that if my life was like that weather—a harmonious collision—that it was a new and beautiful phase. He had created it, and I didn't need to be afraid.
written 9/1/14
