Lesson 201. Let rain remind you

The last few days have seen a lot of rain.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's the kind of rain that I like because of where I sit. I'm home at the moment, so it's the kind of rain that sends me to bed with Calamity Jane, My Fair Lady, and a packet of chocolate chips stolen from the cupboard while my mum was in the laundry. But I get that it's also the kind of rain that has pulled trees to pavements and floods to floors. The kind of rain that can break things, the kind of rain that can sweep you off your feet in an entirely unromantic whoosh and land you with a bruised tailbone and mud smattered trousers. The last two years and a half years have forged a friendship between my bottom and the concrete in an (almost) purely metaphorical way because of this kind of rain, so I know it just as well as I do the feeling of safety that rain can bring. It's kind of strange how something can stir everything standing or secure a feeling of safety in where you are.

Over the last few days, life has reminded me of something that I'd forgotten from my now safe stomping grounds. Wherever you sit, stand (or fall) within what rain means for your life, it must always prompt a moment of gratitude.

If you're like me and you're experiencing a time of little to no turbulence, let it serve as a reminder of how you've grown to who you are. Recognise that maybe the whole cliche that nothing grows without rain is true, and that even though you might never understand why it rained at that time or why on earth it rained so heavy, you grew. You grew stronger and taller and braver.

If you're standing where I stood not so long ago and you're fighting the floods, take a moment to be grateful that you're still standing. Because when the waters are rising, we have to be grateful that we are still there to see them rise. Gratitude has to come from a place deeper than a superficial happiness, it has to come from that place past the corner in your soul that you shut and reopened when you fell in love, it doesn't mean you don't stand in the rain in tears, it means that you see how the tears make you taller, even in that moment.

Let rain remind you.