Into every life, some rain must fall (and soon, we hope)

When I went outside last night just before bedtime to look at the sky, I could see flashes of lightning just beyond the tree line. I could hear muted thunder and a gentle patter of rain.

“Please rain harder,” I thought as I looked at the sky. “And please rain for a lot of hours.”

The contiguous weeks of unusually hot weather we’ve had this summer are causing the ground to dry out. The grass around us is turning yellow and even brown. Since we live on a farm, the problem of drought is meaningful on more than just an intellectual level to us. If rain doesn’t fall in significant amounts soon, the cows will run out of sufficient grazing land and we’ll have to start feeding them hay. Most years – every year I can remember of the ten we’ve lived here on my parents' farm, in fact – the cows have eaten nothing but freshly growing grass from late May through October; we feed bales out of the barn throughout the winter and early to mid-spring. Resorting to hay feedings this summer means running the risk of running short on hay stores by winter.

So despite the increasing commotion of thunder and lightning as the storm moved closer last night, it was the soft patter of rain that caught my attention. I didn’t want to hear a soft patter; I wanted to hear a downpour. I wanted to picture the dark fields becoming soaked through.

The words “Into every life some rain must fall” floated through my mind as I stood on the front porch, but then I remembered that those words are typically invoked as a negative statement, or a consolation; the rain is a metaphor for undesirable circumstances. Saying it last night felt more like I was trying to convince myself: Rain will fall soon; it always does around here. At that moment the expression seemed so misguided. Why should the metaphor of rain falling into every life be used as a negative image? The ground needs some rain. The trees, the grass, the pond life, the forest animals: every living thing around us could benefit from some rain right now.

Imagining the steady rainfall I wished to hear drenching the pastures, causing new green grass to rise up which in turn would nourish the grazing animals, I started thinking about other forces in our lives that have this positive effect of rain, presences that fall into our lives to nourish and strengthen and help us to grow. Into every life some rain must fall. Seen in that positive context, there are so many ways in which rain falls into our lives. I thought about the presence of friends by phone or email or in person when I’m feeling isolated. The encouraging phone calls from my agent over the past couple of weeks, assuring me that my work-in-progress would live and thrive. Unexpected work opportunities falling on my desk recently to end a dry period of not drawing in new clients. The surgeon with whom family members just met who reassured them that he had plenty of experience and reason for optimism regarding problems like the one about which they consulted him. Even the kids’ report cards last month were like nourishing rain, soothing the anxiety I sometimes feel about their school performance.

Into every life some rain must fall. Let’s hope so: our very existence depends upon it. Let’s hope plenty of rain falls soon to feed our pastures and our animals, and let’s be grateful for the rain that falls regularly on our spirits. Not the kind of rain that ruins a picnic or a ballgame: the kind of rain that does what rain is really intended for: cooling, soothing, hydrating, life-giving rain.