When it is Raining – Let it Rain: On Accepting What Is

Photo: Close-up of car in a state of rust, decay, age and beautifully weathered patina. Photo taken at a junkyard - Michigan (2014). Copyright SJPhotography

When it is Raining – Let it Rain: On Accepting What Is

Some days life asks us to just be; be in the mess of it all and allow everything that is happening. Every emotion, every feeling, every lack and want and desire, or the ability to change any of it to something we would rather have to simply be allowed and embraced in the moment. When there is nowhere left to go but here – sometimes it is okay to just sit with our unraveling thoughts, our aching minds, and breaking hearts and just embrace the unwanted and unwelcome pieces of ourselves.

Every day has opportunities to try again, do something different, or heal, or achieve. Yet there are times when loosening your grip, softening your hands, and opening to the messy corners of your being is all that is needed. Sadness or depression or times of loss, and illness can leave us feeling lost, empty, without the energy to try to get out of the heaviness of what is holding us in its grip – yet this is the very real place that asks can you just sit with this feeling of emptiness, this exhaustion and weathered space of unhappiness. Can you see it as an invitation to rest, to let go of searching for something to change it, or figure out how to move away from the realness of what you have deemed wrong, or unwanted?

For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining, is to let it rain.

_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Collection”

We don’t always want to deal with what is happening in our life at times. We find ways to deny, avoid, or distract ourselves from what is real – here now, and happening. We see these things as undesirable and unwelcome – conflicting with our goals for the day, our trajectory for our life, or how we think we should be acting and feeling. We treat these things and by extension ourselves as a problem. We can judge, betray, criticize, and destroy ourselves in the pursuit of getting away from whatever we deem to be not in alignment with what we want in the moment or space in time.