Rain

"And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow." 
Gilbert K. Chesterton 


Rain. 


Some people hate rain.  I mean I guess I cannot blame them.  Rain does sometimes seem to come at less than ideal times.  Take for example a day at the beach... there's nothing worse than seeing looming rain clouds in the sky on what was meant to be the perfect day. 


However, I like the rain.  In fact, I love the rain. 


It is wet, and usually cold.  It is invigorating to say the least.  


Rain makes me feel.  


Alive.


I love the feel of rain on my skin.  I love the feel of rain on my face.  I usually have those moments where I think, Crap! My mascara!  But then again I usually don't even care.


One day during fall semester of my Junior year when I was feeling particularly lonely, empty, and lost, it started to rain.  I walked to the window in my apartment and put my hand to the glass.  I closed my eyes and the next thing I knew I was flying down the staircase running straight out into the rain.  I threw my hands up into the air as if to ask the clouds to aim every last rain drop at me.  I stood there for the longest time my face to the sky letting the rain fall onto my face, and the rest of me.  It was the first time since I arrived at school that I felt truly alive.  I started to cry.  I cried tears of frustration, hurt, guilt, and pain.  It was hard to tell which drops were rain and which were tears.  But it didn't matter.  And then I did something that I never would have expected... I started to laugh.  I had been tormented by so many things up to that point and I was a basket case trying to keep myself in check and act normal for my own sanity and for the sake of my friends and the people I came into contact with.  


It was that day of rain that I started to heal. 


Rain reminds me to live.  
Rain reminds me to breathe.
Rain reminds me to smile. 


So every time it rains I look to the sky and whisper, "Thank you, thank you for sending the rain."