Bring the Rain...

MercyMe is one of my all time favorite groups. They just have so many songs that speak to me where I am. Especially the past few years, songs like "Homesick" just seem to express so well what's in my heart. Recently, reading back through some online discussions and an old journal entry reminded me how another song in particular has woven its way in and out of my life...

Bring the Rain--MercyMe
I can count a million times
People asking me how I
Can praise You with all that I've gone through
The question just amazes me
Can circumstances possibly
Change who I forever am in You
Maybe since my life was changed
Long before these rainy days
It's never really ever crossed my mind
To turn my back on you, oh Lord
My only shelter from the storm
But instead I draw closer through these times
So I pray

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

I am Yours regardless of
The dark clouds that may loom above
Because You are much greater than my pain
You who made a way for me
By suffering Your destiny
So tell me what's a little rain
So I pray

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

Holy, holy, holy
Is the Lord God Almighty

I'd heard the song several times before, playing in the background on the radio. One day for whatever reason, I turned it up and listened to the words...On May 11, 2007, so struck by the implication of those words, I began a discussion on my online MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group forum about the song. I wrote:

"Man, is that ever tough. I love the song, but it's hard to hear. 'Bring me anything that brings You glory.' ???? Are you kidding me? We all know what that's asking for, don't we? I mean, when do you really see God glorified most in life? In the good stuff? Usually in the really trying times...so to ask for that? 'But if that's what it takes to praise You, Jesus bring the rain.' I think that has got to be the height of submission, of surrender. That must be what Oswald Chambers called 'abandoned to God.' I am SO not there, but oh man I wanna be."

I WANNA BE. I want to be so trusting of God that I'll invite into my life whatever brings Him glory. At the time, it was just a comment. Something I thought I'd wade into and "work" toward...I had no idea how that comment would echo into the years to come. Just four days later, May 15, 2007, one day before his second birthday, our son Braeden was diagnosed with cancer. Talk about rain. First we heard the word tumor. Then we were sent to the oncology unit. Then we actually heard the word cancer. It wasn't rain, it was a typhoon of bad news--unfavorable pathology, highly aggressive, poor prognosis....it didn't just rain, it poured.

One thing I can say, if it's not being overly dramatic about a song, is that hearing those words helped shape in my mind and heart an attitude. I chose to have a attitude that focused on God and a desire to see Him glorified in our circumstance no matter what the future brought. I believe the strength to make that choice came from God alone, and that He blessed that desire with grace and peace beyond measure through the greatest of storms.

From where I am now, looking back over the three years since that rain first entered our lives, I am struck by so many things. Most amazing is how God works in things we cannot imagine Him working in--intense pain, suffering and grief. How He can make such a horrible thing THE THING that touches so many lives, perhaps reaching them for the first time. It's still raining. This is one of those rains God allows into our lives that I don't really expect to leave. Life does bring pain. But Braeden is His, I am His, and despite the rain....He is greater than that pain. I don't like rain most of the time. It's annoying, messy, discouraging, and it so often interferes with our plans. Sometimes it literally washes away all we have. But sometimes, that allows things to be made new, in ways we never could imagine. Someday we'll see...and I think we'll be surprised...and amazed.