The ice cold, gray rain fell in sheets. Water gathered in pools forming tiny rivulets of motion on the
black tar of the parking lot that reflected the gray skies above. I continued to work, my hands wet and numb now, my breath visible in the chill of the air. My jacket had long ago soaked through, but at least, my feet were still dry. Inside me, there burnt a drive to finally put this seemingly endless task away; dismantling the Christmas lights and storing them for the year.
I had never intended to work in the rain but merely to get as much done before the storms came this early Friday morning. So, when the first few drops began to fall, I was taking apart the towers and thought, “I’ll just finish this and stop before it becomes a downpour.” As I finished taking apart the last tower, there was just one more thing, then one more and before I knew it, the sky opened up and I continued on.
There was a fire within that drove me onward; to labor in His will.
A distant memory bounced into my head about that time, another memory from the long forgotten past bubbled up, another wet, soggy day like this, only much warmer.
My step-mother always enjoyed buying matching outfits for everyone in the family, whether we were going on vacation, to my father’s work picnic, or just for a special occasion, she liked all our clothing to be the same, including mine. It had to be some inner desire of hers to hear someone exclaim when they noticed, “Hey, look, they’re all dressed the same. They must be a family!”
So one overcast, balmy afternoon following one of those such occasions, we showed up at one of my dad’s friend’s house to visit. We had been somewhere else and had “Dressed” for the occasion, all of us in white shorts with matching button up shirts. One thing led to another, and we soon found ourselves fishing in the friend’s stocked ponds. My family never missed an opportunity to go fishing. Before heading out with fishing poles and tackle in hand, I can still hear my step-mother’s last words, “Don’t get those shorts dirty.”
Yeah right!
We had just barely got our lines cast into the dark, mysterious deep when the rain began. We might have stopped had it not been for a quick hit or two. Once my father got a nibble on his line, we could rest assure we wouldn’t leave until we had a fish in hand, and so it was this particular day. At first, it was a light, touching rain, one that you could easily ignore for the sake of watching your bobber. However, this rain soon began a deluge that began to create streams of water that found the curvature of your spine and then followed it down, down, down into places you’d rather not find cold water running.
The longer we fought the urge to run for cover, the wetter we became. There reaches a point in life when you are so consumed by the heat of the moment that the world around you doesn’t matter; it’s as if your body is put on hold. Soaked to the bone, we were helplessly giddy with our moment under the falling skies. Meanwhile, the banks of the lake had become slick and that’s when we began to fall, one after another. First one of my sisters slid on her bottom while reaching for a hung line, then myself then pretty soon there wasn’t one of us that had not smeared mud, fish entrails, worm guts or grass stains on those pretty white shorts. To make matters worse, we were soaked through and through, from head to toe; nothing was spared of moisture.
I don’t recall how we were received other than the fact it was not a happy reunion when we got back to the house.
So when my friend Heather pulled up and tentatively rolled her window down, squinting against the pouring rain, I realized I had worked past a point of normalcy. It hadn’t hit me until I paused to talk to her just how cold my legs had become. My knees were as numb as my hands, and to stand still while talking made them feel as if they would lock up at any time. In order to keep from falling down I had to shift back and forth to try to regain some sense of circulation in my lower extremities.
After she left, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel with regard to being finished.
“Should I stop or go on,” I thought to myself?
“If you quit now, you’ll go inside and realize how cold, wet and tired you are and you won’t get anything else done the rest of the day,” I answered. So, I pushed onward.
Later, another friend, Dwayne, arrived just as I was struggling with some of the larger pieces; his timing was impeccable. He jumped out of his dry truck and dug right in. I explained to him how I hadn’t intended on working in the rain, but that I was close to finishing. Now, I had someone to talk with as we worked; the time flew by more quickly as the rain continued to fall.
It’s funny how moments in time appear in your thoughts when you are going through difficult times; flashbacks of your own history, times not forgotten.
Yes, there was another cold rainy day, but for some reason, the one from my past seemed much colder.
We were building our first home in Chatham County. We wanted to get as much wired pulled as we could one particular day when it began to pour a cold, hard rain. We worked through the chill as our clothing became soaked. Unfortunately, I didn’t have adequate shoes of jacket that day and my feet were as numb as my hands; I was frozen down to my core. When we finally stopped, I could literally force water to gush out of my clothes as they were wrung out when we reached the safety of the tiny cabin. There we lay our soaked outer garments on the woodstove. The air was filled with the hiss of instant steam as the clothes boiled at the touch of the red hot stove. The radiant heat from the fire, the steam and the beans cooking on the stove made a special ambiance one cannot appropriately describe; it was special coziness to that tiny abode that felt ancient and good. We sat on the bed, loft and few chairs warming ourselves and eating ham and beans that had awaited us on the cooktop, warming us back up, reinvigorating our bodies and souls.
Yes, my stomach was starting to remind me the pre-dawn breakfast was long gone.
We pushed as far as hunger pangs and freezing cold would allow. Later, from the shelter inside the visitor center, I could look out the windows and see with satisfaction how much that had been accomplished this frigid, raw morning. It would have been easy to write it off and postpone the work until another day; yet, now the task was almost complete.
The temperature outside had been barely 38 degrees for the high and the rain lasted the remainder of the day.
The sense of accomplishment inside overshadowed the bluish hue of my nearly frozen skin. After changing into some dry clothing and eating lunch, the warmth and fullness allowed exhaustion to finally reach me.
I know there are harder days ahead, but knowing from where we’ve come can sometimes make what we are going through more bearable, if nothing else, just by the sheer knowing, “If we could live through that, then we can do this too.’
So, it goes. Another day passes and another unthinkable challenge has passed, with success and with having learned a little more about ourselves. Our labor can be His will, and in that we can rejoice.
“I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives, 13 and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor—it is the gift of God.
14 I know that whatever God does, It shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it, And nothing taken from it. God does it, that men should fear before Him. 15 That which is has already been, And what is to be has already been; And God requires an account of what is past.” Eccl. 3:12-15
