The Unexpected Life

It has been a rainy week here. And when I say rainy I don’t just mean brief periods of soft rain lightly misting the flowers and greening up the grass. I mean absolute downpouring rain. I mean standing at the bus stop waiting for my kid with water gushing around my ankles in a river where the road used to be, holding an umbrella in a largely fruitless attempt to keep some of the buckets of water off my head. Not even raining cats and dogs, more like raining cows and horses.

As I sit in this Starbucks trying to write something, the clouds have broken once again in an unexpected downpour. The parking lot is full of people rushing to their cars, soaked to the bone by the time they get there. It’s the kind of rain that you know can’t last long because surely clouds cannot hold that much water. It is simply impossible for the rain to keep up at this pace.

And yet, it continues to rain. The puddles are growing as is the crowd of people nervously standing by the door debating whether to make a run for it to their cars or hold off a little longer.

In good Canadian fashion, everyone is talking about the weather as they wait.

“At least we’ll avoid the forest fires this year if this keeps up!”

“I have an umbrella. It’s in my car though…”

“I wore the wrong shoes for this!”

I feel nothing but sympathy for that last person. I also wore the wrong shoes for this today. As I was about to the leave the house, I realized I was still wearing my slippers. While it wouldn’t have been the first time I found myself out in public wearing what could generously be called house shoes, but are definitely not meant to be worn outside, I opted for a quick change. As I was heading towards the mudroom to make the switch, I thought to myself “Elizabeth, you should wear your waterproof sandals in case it rains.” By the time I finished the long journey down 5 stairs that thought had drifted clear out of my brain. And now, I’m sitting here in Birkenstocks, which have many positive attributes but their most annoying feature by far is that you aren’t really supposed to get them wet because they have a largely cork-based sole. I’m seriously contemplating the possibility of racing to my car barefoot while hiding my Birks under my sweater.

Just kidding.

Finding myself unprepared for the weather is a personal pet peeve. I have the good fortune of living in a time where up-to-date weather predictions are available to me at all times. I can click two buttons on my phone and watch a weather radar show me when precipitation is expected directly over my house and how much of it there will be. There is no reason except a lack of forethought for me to be out on a rainy day in shoes that are the opposite of rainwear.

I suppose it isn’t surprising that I dislike being unprepared for the weather. It is generally true of me. I’m a “Google the menu before heading to a new restaurant” type person, a “street-view the location to check out the parking situation in advance” type person, a “look at the table of contents to see where the book is going” type person. I discovered that my husband doesn’t like to read the back of a book cover before reading the book because it would give too much away (this only works for books recommended to him, but that’s pretty much the only way he picks books anyway). I can’t fathom that kind of come-what-may attitude. Surprise endings are only fun when I’ve guessed the ending before we get there. I don’t like a twist I didn’t see coming.

In real life, it is obviously unavoidable to have unexpected things occur. It, quite frankly, sucks. I would much prefer to have been able to read the back cover of the story of my life. To be able to suss out if this is a story with some frivolous conflicts and a happy ending, or one that will be poignant and rife with hard-earned lessons. That’s not how it works though.

The best I can do is remember who the author of my story is – the same God who made the universe is faithfully, lovingly writing my story. When I can’t trust how any given twist will turn out, I can trust the author. I can trust that He knows how the story ends. When I find myself proverbially wearing the wrong shoes for the weather, the author of my story knows that the sun will shining again by the time I’m ready to leave (or that my shoes can handle one rainstorm even if I don’t think they can, or that my shoes might get wrecked but at the end of the day, they’re just shoes so it isn’t really a big deal). The point is, I don’t have to panic and run barefoot through the parking lot. I can trust the story being written because I can trust the author.