When the rain stops, God sends rainbows and roses

We all know the old saying, "When it rains, it pours." I want to add my own addendum to that - the title of this post. When it rains, it pours, but when the rain stops then God sends rainbows and roses.

I've been telling myself that lots of parts of life are going through waves - they have their upturns and their downturns. Normally things are heading downhill in just one or two areas at a time, and I feel buffered by the upturns. This time, I felt like there were gradual downturns pretty much everywhere. But when you get to the bottom of the downturn, you usually hit an upturn. And since everything went down at the same time, now everything is going up at the same time, for at least a while.

So we're getting rainbows - the natural fallout from a storm. There's the joy of rebuilding a strained relationship (because relationship building is more fun than maintaining). Free and easy smiles look much prettier when they haven't been seen for a while. They are our reminders of our wedding vow to each other that things will never get so bad that we try to wipe out the past in a flood of rain and misery (what else can divorce be?) and start over - we can always keep working from where we are, and will always keep trying again "until death do us part".

Then there are the roses - the fresh, good things that come up as a result of the storm, that would not flower without the rain. DH's growing pride in our home, still seeming a touch fragile, but definitely sprouting. The clean home from the maid service that cleaned for the first time yesterday (but the pre-cleaning we did - led by DH - was the real win). There's my deeper understanding that even meddling that someone else says they wants - is still meddling, and is still getting in the way of them doing it themselves. Sometimes even a marraige needs tough love (oh, dear, that means it'll be my turn some day . . . LOL).

The rain analogy continues further - the mess and debris that builds up in our heads is cleared away a bit more after the storm, like dust washed away from leaves and rocks, and the world seems fresher, cleaner, somehow better defined. We can see better the things we care about, and even the air is clearer - allowing us to see further, to view mountain peaks in the distance and grasp better the bigger world around our little niche of life.

True, the ground here is still a bit soggy, and will stay that way for a while. However, that's no reason not to go outside in my bare feet, soak it in, and marvel for a bit.

And now - it's time for me to put my metaphorical shoes back on, take one last look around - and metaphorically head back inside my all-too-literal office and get back to my very literal work.