Rainy Days

It's a rainy day at my house.

I used to love rainy days when I was a kid. Sure, I couldn't do things I had planned to do, like riding my bike or climbing the neighbors chinaberry tree or playing football in the backyard with my brother.

But then I also didn't have to do other things my mother had planned for me, like working in the flower beds. Instead, I was free to discover something new and spend time on things I usually didn't slow down long enough to notice.

Like curling up with that big-kid book... the one with no pictures and more chapters than I'd ever read before.

Or playing dress-up with my big sister's old clothes and see if any of them fit me yet, wondering if I'd be as pretty in them as she had been.


Life is full of interruptions like rainy days.

Illness.

Unemployment.

Accidents or death of a loved one.

Even as we face these challenges we know we’ll eventually get past it all and go on to something better. Still, living right there, in the meantime, can be very difficult.

I’ve lived through a couple of significant interruptions in my life and I’ve learned a thing or two about how I cope with the stress of the unknowns…

…or how I don’t.

I actually led a seminar on this topic for a ministers wives retreat a few years ago and I've toyed with the idea of writing a book about living “in the meantime”, but I think I’ll start with this blog.

How do you cope with the interruptions and in-betweens of life? What do you when you're stuck at Point A, wondering if you'll ever get to Point B?

Do you shake your fist at the universe…?

Or do you see it as an opportunity

…to learn something new

…to be something new

…to see something new that you might never have seen

...if not for that darned interruption?