Love, life, the rain and Father's Day

On this Father's Day an important lesson about love, life and fathers washed over me on my morning walk -- lessons I learned from binge watching a series with my wife, and watching my daughter work on a project for the past six weeks.

Last night, my wife and I finished the HBO Max mini series Love Life. The series chronicles the love lives of a cast of characters from their impressionable post-college days until their full adulting years. The moral of the story is that life and love are messy. It takes us a while to figure it out. And sometimes when we do, it might be too late.

I actually came away with a different take on things. Life and love aren’t messy, they just are. What’s messy are our expectations, insecurities and unwillingness to deal with what life brings us.

Life is like the weather. It just is.

There are seasons. There are hot days, cold days, wet days and snow days. And like life, sometimes the weather can be disastrous.

God’s blessed providence again showed up as confirmation. He tends to do that when we come to an understanding of simple truths.

The weather isn’t messy, just our attempts to deal with is messy and complicated. Meteorologists have emerged as experts to help us deal with the weather and its changes, pitfall, travails and opportunities. They can’t and don’t control the weather. They simply try to predict it in hopes of preparing us for it.

We all know that meteorologists aren’t perfect. They get it wrong all the time.

As I went outside to take my morning walk on Father’s Day, I meditated on the simple fact that life just is.

I came to the conclusion since we can’t control what happens to us, or the weather, we have to be willing to embrace what both have to offer. Sometimes you have to not only be willing to get wet, but to embrace the rain and the storm.

Don’t run from it. Don’t run through it. Stand in it. Relish it and all of its wetness. The outside world can’t run or hide from the weather so why do we think that we can?

Just as I thought this, the sky opened up and it started pouring.

I was a half mile from home, getting soaked from head to toe.

I couldn’t believe it. Then again, I could.

God’s blessed providence again showed up as confirmation. He tends to do that when we come to an understanding of simple truths.

I’m not one to celebrate Father’s Day. I’m not really a Hallmark holiday kinda guy. My family has reluctantly given me my space to be holiday free, but they all still wished me a Happy Father’s Day, careful not make too much of a fuss about it.

I believe in celebrating life every day in as many moments as we can.

Watching my youngest daughter over the past month work on a project for her boyfriend was the best father’s day present any father could ever ask.

My daughter’s boyfriend’s father was killed when her boyfriend was just 2 years old. He never really knew anything about his father and just recently connected with his father’s family. My daughter embarked upon a six-week research project to create a scrapbook with pictures, stories and memories of him.

It’s not what happens to us, it’s how we deal with what happens to us.

She contacted family members via Facebook and word of mouth and cobbled together a history, a mythology of sorts of his father. She gave it to him last night at midnight.

My daughter saw a raging storm in the tragedy of her boyfriend’s father’s life. She didn’t listen to the report. She didn’t grab an umbrella. She just went out and stood in the rain for six weeks.

Then she gave her boyfriend the pot of gold that was at the end of the rainbow that sprouted after the storm. She gave him his father, for him to accept on his own terms.

As I came in from the rain after my walk, I stood in the foyer and thanked God for the rain and the understanding that life isn’t messy. It just is.

It’s not what happens to us, it’s how we deal with what happens to us.

And if we are not afraid to get wet from time to time, then life becomes easier to deal with.

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