My world is a flood

I took another trip upstate this weekend.  This time, to my cousin's house in Albany.  It seems that every time I go visit her, it rains or snows either on my way up there or coming back down.  I remember a few years ago hitting torrential rain, to the point where I couldn't see, all the way from about New Baltimore to home.

Then there was the December day in 2008, when I drove up there in snow, which took me 6 hours, and I skidded off the road a few times.  I had planned on staying Friday and Saturday nights, and returning home the Sunday before Christmas, where I would attend a party at my church.  Well, I got on the road and made it about 3 miles before I turned around and went back to my cousin's house.  Because it was snowing again, and I just couldn't stomach another 6 hour white knuckle trip back down to New York.  Besides, on my trip up I'd seen a guy flip over the guard rail while headed south on I87, somewhere between Newburgh and Kingston, and I didn't want the same fate.

The last time I went up there, back in April, I wanted to head back early to see Dusty's friend play a concert in the Lower East Side, but that didn't pan out, in part because of the torrential rain that plagued me the entire trip down, and flooded the Hutchinson River Parkway, and closed it.  So it was another 5 hour journey.

I'm not a big fan of driving in rain, although I suck it up and I do it because I'd be very bored if I didn't.  I live in a humid climate.  My big concerns about the rain are the fact that I can't see, and the fact that I hate sliding in my car.  But while my rational mind tells me I shouldn't be so scared, the irrational part plays on my fears.  And, as Arcade Fire says, "you always fall for ... what you fear."  And so I listen to the irrational side.

This Friday I went up there and had high hopes of breaking the long-standing ritual of precipitation while going to or leaving Albany.  Friday was a gorgeous day.  Saturday was forecast to be the same.  There was some rain scheduled for later that night, but not until long after I'd have left.  So when I felt a couple raindrops on me before I'd even gotten to my car, I was seriously disappointed.  But I got in my car and went on my way.

The rain kept at a pretty steady pace, but not bad, certainly not torrential like the last time.  Still annoying to deal with.  So I asked God to please make the rain stop.  But instead he gave me comfort through music, and let the rain continue.  And so it did, on and off the entire way home.  But I realized something about God and how this is a great metaphor for life.

Just because you pray to God to change something, it doesn't mean it's going to happen.  In fact, many times the lessons come in the annoying things, the dangerous things, the things that scare you or the things you just don't feel like dealing with.  But in the journey he sends comfort.