Rain rain rain!

It’s strange. It hasn’t rained here since, at least, I believe, May. But a mere two days after I mentioned the drought, the heavens have opened up and it’s pouring right now. The drops are pounding the roof loudly, a sound so foreign that it’s almost magical, like it’s from another world.

I love it.

Now I’m not one to look for signs under every stone and around every corner, (okay, maybe I am, on occasion,) but considering just how much that dried up river affected me, it’s pretty cool that the next time I visit it – which will likely be soon, since one of the first things Lyric said when she saw the rain was, “We have to go to Malibu Creek!” – it will be a river again, deep, wet, and full of life – the kind that makes me unexplainably, foundationally, primally happy.

And in my own life, and the life of those I love most, I’ve most certainly been experiencing a dried up river of catastrophic proportions. Sometimes I list out the things that have happened to myself or those I love in 2009 and it literally boggles my mind.

But there’s something about dried up riverbeds. You learn a lot more of what normally lies below the surface. When walking along Malibu Creek’s path, I noticed caves carved into rocks that would normally be completely underwater and invisible to me. I saw rock formations, tree roots reaching down into what had been the depths. I feel like I learned things about Malibu Creek that I’d never had known had that water never dried up.

And I cannot deny that, in the dried riverbed of my life – and the lives of those closest to me – I think we’ve all learned a whole lot of invaluable things about ourselves and each other. Not to say, really, that any of this has been good, but maybe it has been necessary – or at least made the best of.

In other words, I think I’ve shock and denial, the guilt, the anger, the bargaining, the depression… and am now moving towards acceptance and hope. And I’m ready for that rain to fall.