rainy day in june

Today it's all smudgy and grey outside. It was sprinkling when we left for work, but still white, still glaring. And now it's dark and the rain is coming down, slow soft rhythm. This is why I love the rain. The movement of it, the rhythm. Something you can slip into. Today's a good day to be curled on the couch under a blanket, under the sound of it. But I have hot chocolate so even in the office I still feel cozy.

And today's the first day of hurricane season, for me at least the tense version of today. I've written about it before, but I love hurricanes--not the damage they do, not ones like Katrina, but the wildness of sitting in your hallway on a mattress while outside it's an electric windstorm. Particularly in this city I worry about flooding, but I'm thinking about all the hurricanes from when I was kid, when the power would go out and Josh and I would be on the twin mattress together trying to blow out a candle from across the room. Speaking of rhythms. Those were the bottomed-out, flat part of every year, when it was so hot outside, everything steeped in humidity and there came come those storms, everything washing away and in the morning, what was left? Bluer sky than you'd believe, like being really high up. All the metaphors of new starts, new things, and my brother who, for years, was scared of the wind.

It's been a strange summer so far, different in nearly every way than last summer. It's been hard, too. The word I'm thinking mainly of is reconciliation. It's been good in that I think I've finally come to understand giving something to God I've never even come close to, that I've just held tight like pretending it away. And here we are, second time around as messy as the first but somehow I've found myself trusting that even though it might be the same thing all over again that there's nothing in vain at all about it. Whatever that will mean, however much I don't like it, I'm finding that if just keep saying yes to God then it's working out, that I'm still in one piece, and that, in fact, I'm better than before.

The tension of it all's what's got me thinking of hurricanes. It's pouring outside now but the sound of it is a solid thing, something you can lean on. All these metaphors and I feel like life is hurricaning the heck out of me, but there's comfort in it. I remember the wind blowing furiously and if there's anything that can invoke awe in me--but this word is in awesome and awful. I think that's where I'm at right now--I am in awe of my God. And I remember that sweeping away is something like the old has gone, the new has come.