In the rain, the pavement shines like silver...

As I drove home today, I thought the weight of the rain would bring my car to a standstill. Today it rained, hard. Not really hard enough to stop traffic, not even hard enough to slow a determined bicyclist. It was just heavy. Life felt heavy. And as I dusted off a day's work, I watched the sky purge itself all around me. I needed to purge too.

Tonight it's 57 degrees outside, which for some of you isn't cold. But it's definitely enough to bite just a little when the rain falls down on your face. I'd just finished running at the gym. Hot and sweaty, something lured me downstairs again and out the door into the night. Having just hopped off the treadmill, my body was numb to the chill, embraced its coolness even, but I was determined to walk out in it long enough to let it numb me the other way around. My tank top left arms bare and free to feel it all. I've been oddly closed off, but let the night and my recent turn of events take me in a new direction. I was listening to the rest of a sermon about emotion and fear, dealing with some of my own demons. The piercing cold felt nice. It felt nice to feel...to think...and to really pray. I realized that I let Christmas waltz right past me this year. I let the entire thing happen to me without hardly acknowledging the One I was supposed to be celebrating. I completely missed it because I was so selfishly distracted by my own petty ideas of desire, chasing carefully justified dreams. I was simultaneously horrified and amazed--at both my behavior and God's loving pursuit despite it. The pastor closed in prayer. I switched to my music and a song by Shane and Shane narrated my story.

He will allure her.
He will pursue her,
Call her out to wilderness with flowers in his hand.
She is responding,
Beat up and hurting,
Deserving death.
Offerings of life are found instead.
She will sing, she will sing, oh to You
She will sing as in the days of youth.
As You lead her away to valleys low,
To acres of hope.
Acres of Hope.

I cried. Tears down smiling cheeks, I glimpsed a small fraction of what that crazy lady at my uncle's church must have felt when she couldn't stop herself from shouting out during the service. I could hear her: "to the world, we look so foolish..." I felt silly singing to the sky, arms open wide, but it felt good. They were singing about me.

Here in the valley,
Walk close beside me,
Don't look back
For love is growing vineyards up ahead...
Though you're in the dark here,
Call me friend and call me lover.
Marry me for good.
She will sing, she will sing...
Acres of Hope

Many people have heard me both joke about and discuss seriously how I don't believe in love. Turns out that has been a bit of a dramatization too. In the rain, I think I shined brighter than any of the misty lights shimmering in the rivers of runoff water. I couldn't help but want to dance--literally dance like a crazy person--like people do when they are in love.

The Love of God. That's a love I believe in. I have felt it, and it is so sweet. And if one day God graces me with the blessing to love a man even half that much, what a beautiful, beautiful thing it will be.

Then, from the heights of that high, that's when the most amazing thing happened: I almost died. I was crossing the intersection on my way back home and a car utterly barreled through the red light...so close in front of me that it was only the wind created by it's speed that halted my steps--one more that would have laid me out flat on the pavement, in the silver and the lights. It took a moment for the reality of the situation to sink through the numbness, the joy and the cold that had left me oblivious to the world outside. Moments ago, I was singing Amazing Grace and now by the grace of God I was still standing and able to sing.

How the story ends is
Love and Tenderness
in Him.

Not safe, but worth it,
So worth it..