latter rain

In the month since I’ve written a web-log, I have traveled to Santa Fe for The Glen; Hannah has started Kindergarten; and I have been to Chicago to help steer the first issue of Relief Journal to publication in November. It has been a fruitful month and full of promise. But still, it had not rained.

My eyes have calmed down to a manageable state and I found respite in the summer rains of the high desert of Santa Fe and the lake-misted weekend in Chicago. I shed tears when Hannah left for school (though she did not) and this morning we started back to Brad’s grueling law school routine. I have pondered over God’s pharmacy of spittled clay and bargain-priced eye salve, and readjusted to my fifth-grade phobia of being called “four-eyes” on the playground. Silly, I know, when all of you wear them too, but insecurities die hard.

For over forty days, Dallas had temperatures over 100 degrees. For forty days, and then some, it did not rain. The earth split open like a jigsaw puzzle glued to lycra. But at midnight, when I disembarked from the Chicago flight to Dallas last night, I saw the lightening in the western sky. The air hung heavy and for once I didn’t worry about tornadoes.

This morning, as Bethany and I took Hannah to Kindergarten, they stuck out their tongues to catch the mist. By ten, the sky had darkened, and then it rained. It’s a soft, slow rain that blankets the grass; it will not flood the bayous like a summer storm in Houston. Nor will it stop the sickly yellow leaves from fainting off the trees. But it is enough—enough to pull me out of an air-conditioned stupor and join the voices of a great multitude that sounds like rushing waters and peals of thunder: the Almighty reigns.