refreshment

In El Salvador, it rains for half of the year, and it doesn't rain for the other half. It's that simple. And yet so powerful.

This year, rainy season started late, and we all felt it. We all felt the heaviness in the air. We all struggled beneath the stubbornness of rain that would gather in the dark clouds that roll down the volcano every afternoon and then never fall. The brown plants begged for it. The crops longed for it. We all gasped under the weight of the humidity. And the Salvadoran people (and those of us that are adopted into the Salvadoran family) felt an anxiousness, a readiness to stop tottering on the brink of seasons. Ready for stability. Ready to be refreshed. Ready to move on past this season of dryness.

have you ever felt like that?

We came to the realization that this extended period of dryness only magnified our spiritual state. Our thirst. Our dryness. Our desire to be refreshed, rejuvenated, revitalized. We realized that during this time of anticipation, a majority of the worship songs we were singing at church revolved around rain...crying out for the Lord to send His rain. We realized the double meaning of our cries: we were literally praying for the rain to fall on the earth to set in motion a season of growth and life, and we were symbolically asking for a new season of growth and life in our own hearts.

And then the rain fell.

And we all exhaled the breath we had been holding. And we felt the relief of a cool breeze instead of smothering humidity.

I don't think it's a coincidence that we had our first-ever overnight church retreat the same weekend the rains started. Refreshment, new life, healing for a dry and cracked land. An opportunity to move on to the next stage.

Of course, with a new season comes new challenges. On a logistical level, rainy season for us means difficulty drying clothes and Suzy's diapers, especially when we have a 4-day storm which we just experienced. It also means that our everyday outside activities, like Suzy taking her morning bath outside in the patio and taking our daily trip to the neighborhood park is iffy at best. Suzy doesn't really understand why she can't "go go go" as she begs every afternoon like we did before. She doesn't remember the last rainy season so it doesn't quite make sense yet.

But that's how it is, isn't it? We long for the new season in life with a deep thirst, and then we must learn how to deal with the new challenges that are presented that weren't an issue before.

As a family, as we are still in a longing stage on many levels, I want to remember that with the refreshment, there will be new struggles as well that come with the rain. I can't romanticize the future too much. I want to remember that there are details in this season that we will miss when they are gone and I want to be able to appreciate those.

Here are a couple of the songs we've been singing at church (in Spanish)...