Rain is an Opportunity to Share an Umbrella

The drizzle was light this morning, almost peaceful as it thrummed off my water-repellent hood, the sleeve of my outstretched arm, the small umbrella I held over two girls and their backpacks as they waited for the bus. Another mom soon joined, spread her umbrella as a canopy above her head, and several children quickly huddled in. We waited in the rain for a bus behind schedule, sharing both companionship and shelter. In an ordinary moment of an ordinary morning, I realized something beautiful: rain is an opportunity to share an umbrella.

While there is something nostalgic about listening to rain ping against the window frames when I have no obligation to pull me out into the wet, I am one who usually gripes inside about the inconvenience of rain. Ever try to shield yourself, three munchkins, and a shopping cart overflowing with groceries with a single umbrella while sheets of water plummet earth-ward and the wind whips your umbrella inside out, and you get my drift. But is rain just an annoying and unwelcome necessity? Or does it offer us more than drink for earth, and man, and beast?

The bus now come and gone and me back inside with my jacket still wet from the rain and my hair still unwashed, I continue pondering. In the rain, it matters less the unfinished work waiting for us, the drain of the mundane, the unforgiving weight of our anxiety. More distant are our houses and cars and things we have worked so hard to buy. Our thoughts are more quickly brought round to the present. And here, in the rain we are all much more the same.

Rain strips away the pretenses because rain favors no one—it saturates us all equally. It is not subject to our schedules or appearances or preferences. It sets the pace, slowing our hurry. It grounds us to the moment—the drum of the drops and the mist touching our faces even beneath an umbrella more palpable than yesterday’s and tomorrow’s worries. Rain downplays the categories our stuff shuffles us into. Here, with the rain bouncing off our toes, we are all much more the same.

There’s more here for the unwrapping. Here in the rain, we are just us. Just us and our desire to feel safe, to feel of value, to feel noticed and cared for and connected. Just us without many of the things we surround ourselves with to warrant our worth, just us without the counterpart to our battles, just us with our humidity-zapped hair and clothes damp where the umbrella doesn’t protect us. Rain shows us the humanity in all of us.

And yet, where do we often look when the rain pours? Is it not down at the rain sloshing against our feet? In a moment of potential connection, a shared experience with other humans, we retreat—under our umbrellas, under our hoods, under our loneliness. We simply fail to see how much the same we are as the person we are next to. Time ticks on. Our slowed pace still eventually brings us back inside, out of the rain, back to the things that can mask the loneliness.

This morning at the bus stop a different picture could have been created: what gives shelter can also separate. Centered each under our own umbrella we can stand only so close together. Similarly, rain can obscure our vision, bend our eyes inward to a self-focused gaze. But we have a choice to lift our eyes, look through the rain, see the others standing near in the same rain.

May I encourage you today with this: rain can blind us to each other, or it can gently help us see. We can see the rain as a gift to help us see each other.

We can gripe against the inconvenience of the rain, rail against its torrents, and wish away the present moment. Or we can give thanks for the day despite the rain, give thanks for the rain itself, give thanks for the opportunity to reach out to a neighbor and share an umbrella. How we see parallels the level of gratitude we allow to grace our hearts.

When gratitude gets in, it makes a way for more. Giving thanks for something small opens our heart to see far more blessing in the ordinary, beauty in the routine, opportunity in the challenge.

Who will we choose to be today—those who begrudge the rain in our lives, or those who can find thanksgiving for the rain, for the opportunities for connection, for the chance to share an umbrella?

The book that is teaching me so much about counting as a gift what I may not think warrants my thanks, Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, contains this treasure: “The practice of giving thanks . . . eucharisteo . . . this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don’t have to change what we see. Only the way we see” (135). Rain changes the way we see—if we let it. Rain is an opportunity to share an umbrella—if we choose to see it.

If you are willing to stay here for another moment, here are a couple questions to ponder.

1. Who around me have I been not seeing?
2. Who can I invite under my umbrella?

Dear Jesus, please grant us vision to see through the rain, see who is next to us that we may not be seeing? Would You reveal Yourself in the rain in our lives? May gratitude grow abundantly in our lives as we see both gift and opportunity in the rain.

Voskamp, Ann. One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Alive Right Where You Are. Zondervan, 2010.

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