Finally rain. I hadn’t kept an eye on the weather reports, but I thought it was coming. It has been so hot and the ground already had dry August cracks begging for a drink to green things up. It’s not supposed to be like this in June. June is the rainy month. I remember when I used to teach swim lessons there were weeks at a time when the pool would be closed for rain…or we’d be standing in waist deep water our teeth chattering trying to coax a child into relaxing enough for a black float while the clouds gathered overhead. But yesterday it finally rained.

All week it has been so hot and humid and rumors of that building into a thunderhead and somewhere in the city or the suburbs it had…but no rain for us. The lilies are trying to flower but the buds are wrinkling instead of blooming. The last cherries on the tree look like raisins hanging there.

Yesterday I took my morning walk with coffee in hand, picked a zucchini, popped a cherry tomato in my mouth and noticed how heavy the air was. I reminded God how badly we need rain. By afternoon as I wandered out to the mailbox the sun was hiding but it was still so hot. “hey, God, we sure could use some rain.“ I carried the trash out to the barrel in the evening and I thought “It’s gonna rain. Oh, how we need it!”.

Sure enough, I was cleaning up the kitchen and notice the chickens all run for cover at once. I dropped what I was doing and ran outside. A downpour! Most of that would just run off the hardened earth but it was better than nothing. I sat down in the old wooden chair by the door, glad I’d found it at the garage sale. I just sat there and soaked it all in. There was some distant thunder but the rain song came from the rain hitting all those leaves of the many trees surrounding our house as the reached out the gather in every drop.

I was only sitting under an overhang so now and then I’d get some cool spray but mostly the rain was coming straight down. The smell was fabulous, too. Did the rain smell like cilantro? Yes, it was pounding my herb garden and the plants were giving up their scents readily.

It moved though quickly and in less than ten minutes of heaven on earth I found myself wandering bare foot through the fresh and tender grass. Only this morning it had been dry and hot. Amazing what a drink will do. The rain gauge registered only about an eight of an inch.

But that was just the first chorus! It cooled things off a bit for the fireworks show and held off ‘til it was over. The clouds made a beautiful backdrop for those fireworks! A gentle rain followed with showers all night long. Perfect for the thirsty, dangerously dry on the 4th of July world. Two inches!

Thank you God for giving us what we need when we need it. Would I have appreciated that rain if it had come as usual? Would I have cursed it for making mud where I want to dig and rotting my cherries before I could get to them? Why do we appreciate you and all you do so much more when we suffer first? Thank you , God, for this good rain.