Rainy Days and Fridays...

It's been raining. In just 3 days, we had 2 storms pass our City. It is always like this, every year from June - October or November, the rains decide to pour themselves down on us. I have gotten used to this, it has always been like this since I was a kid.

When I was in elementary, strong rains made me happy. They meant classes were suspended and cold, rainy afternoons would be spent playing with cousins. As I grew older, strong rains no longer appealed to me. They meant wet jeans and jackets. Feeling miserably cold while sitting in a colder classroom listening to the college professor lecture away as I yearned to be dismissed so that I could go straight to a coffee house and get a hot cup of coffee. As the years passed, rains became a constant complaint, finding myself asking for the warm sun to sunshine its rays on my days.

Today, I like to see the rain as a sign of the changing seasons of this earth. Inevitable. Needed to water the trees and the plants. When I look out the window, I see happiness. The grass so green, so lush. It's nature's way of feeding - of blessing the plants and the trees and the flowers.
Rainy days used to make me sad, used to make me sulk. It used to give me reason to complain.
But rainy days allow me to be still. To sit and cuddle with my kids - also with myself. To seek warmth not from people or things outside, but from within. It is a time I cannot escape.

Sometimes I look for the sun - for sunshiny days when weather is cool and light but I am reminded that it cannot be. Rainy days remind me to be content - to be thankful for what I have and for what I do not have.

And as the seasons of the earth change, so do the seasons of our lives.