It Rained For Three Days

You saved for eleven months and it rained on three of the four days.

And you have been home for a week now, and every time somebody asks how it was you say it was lovely, and then you go and do something in another room.

Let me say the arithmetic out loud, because you have been running it silently and it deserves to be said properly.

Four days. Three of them wet. Eleven months of putting money aside for one afternoon of the weather you had pictured. And a specific memory of standing at a window on the second morning watching it come down, doing the sum.

That is not self pity. That is a real thing that happened to a real amount of money, and I am not going to tell you it does not matter, because it cost you eleven months.

What I want to do is ask you a different question about those three days. Not whether they were what you paid for. What actually happened in them.

Because I suspect you have not looked, and I suspect the reason is that you decided on the second morning at the window that the answer was nothing.

They kindled a fire, because of the present rain

There is a detail in the last chapter of Acts that I want to put in front of you, and it is one of those pieces of the Bible that is only there because somebody thought it was worth recording.

Paul has been shipwrecked. Everybody is on a beach. It is raining and it is cold.

And the barbarous people shewed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire, and received us every one, because of the present rain, and because of the cold. (Acts 28:2, King James Version)

You have a verse in the written word where the kindness happens because of the rain rather than in spite of it, and no wet day has ever once been a day with nothing in it. Acts 28:2 gives the rain as the stated reason the fire was lit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a detail like that specific to a woman standing at a window on a second morning.

Read the causation. Because of the present rain. The fire was lit because it was raining. Had the weather been fine, there is no fire in that story and no kindness recorded, and the whole scene does not exist.

The rain is not the obstacle to what happened. The rain is the reason it happened.

You are able to look for what came because of the rain, and looking has never once required you to be glad about the weather. It is written that they kindled a fire because of the present rain and because of the cold, which puts the wet weather in the causing position, and the Spirit of God is what turns a woman's attention from what was lost to what was actually there.

And notice who does it. Barbarous people, which just means people who did not speak Greek. Strangers, on a beach, who owed Paul nothing.

The good thing in that chapter comes from a direction nobody could have planned. Nothing about the fire was in anybody's arrangements.

You are not the person who has to produce what a week contains, and no arrangement of yours has ever once been what decided it. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings the unplanned thing, and Acts 28 has the fire arriving from strangers rather than from anybody's preparation.

Two accounts of the same three days

Now the practical part, and it is about which ledger has been kept.

There are two accounts of those three days and only one of them has been opened.

The first is the account of what was paid for and not received. That one is accurate, complete, and it has been gone over many times. Beach, sun, the picture on the wall of your head for eleven months. All absent.

You are able to hold an accurate account of what was lost, and no honest ledger has ever once been the only ledger. It is written that the fire was lit because of the present rain, which is an entry nobody would ever find in the first column, and the Holy Spirit is the one who opens a second page for a woman who has only read one.

The second is the account of what happened in the room instead. And I would put money on that one being longer than you think, and on you never having read it.

You are able to open the second account, and reading it has never once required you to close the first one. The Spirit of God is what shows a person a whole column they did not know they had, and it is written that a fire was kindled because of the rain, which is an entry in the second ledger rather than the first.

So let me help you look, because it is difficult to see a thing you have already filed as nothing.

Three wet days with a family in a small space produces things that four sunny days do not. Long conversations, because there is nowhere to go. Somebody teaching somebody else a game. The specific silliness that only happens indoors. Being at close quarters for hours with nothing to do, which is a thing modern families almost never experience and which children remember for decades.

You have had three days of something almost nobody gets, and no part of it has ever once been the consolation version of a beach. It is written that the strangers received them every one, in the rain, which is the closest thing in that chapter to a good week, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a mother see the room she was actually in.

And here is the thing about your children, which I say with confidence because it is nearly always true. Ask them, in a month, what they remember. It will be from the wet days.

Not because rain is better. Because being indoors together for three days is unusual and being at a beach is not.

You are able to ask them and believe the answer, and no child has ever once ranked a week the way the person who paid for it does. Acts 28:2 records the fire rather than the forecast, and the Spirit of God is what lets a mother hear her own children name the wet days without flinching at it.

Name one thing, and tell it

So here is the assignment, and it is smaller than it sounds and it will cost you something.

Name one thing that happened only because of the rain. And then tell it to somebody.

The naming first, and be specific. Not it was cozy. One actual event, with a time and a person in it. The evening the four of you played that thing for two hours. The conversation your eldest started that would never have started in a car. The morning the youngest fell asleep on you at eleven in the morning, which has not happened in years.

You are able to name one real thing from the second account, and one is enough to open a column that has been shut since the second morning. Acts 28:2 records one fire on one beach because of one rainy day, and the Spirit of God is with a woman sitting down to remember on purpose.

Then tell it. Out loud, to one person, and here is why that half matters. At the moment, the story of that week that exists in the world is the one you tell when people ask, which is a short polite sentence followed by you leaving the room.

Tell somebody the other one. Say: it rained for three days, and the second evening we sat and did that thing for two hours and I have not laughed like that in a year.

You are able to give that week a different account in the world, and telling it that way has never once been you pretending the money did not matter. It is written that the kindness came because of the present rain, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a woman tells the true longer version of her own week.

And the eleven months. You did that. Nobody else in your family could have done it, and the fact that the weather did not cooperate does not touch what it cost you or what it says about you.