Smile? On a rainy day!?

                                                        
You. have got. to be kidding. I don’t want to smile today. It rained.
And don’t tell me to “dance in the rain” cuz I can just see the girl who wrote that, you want to know what she looks like?  Blue eyes, tall, thin, “put together”… She just had a bad day, like a rotten day, and it rained. But, guess what! She, being Miss Perfect, is able to see past the fogged up window on her little car, out into the reflection on the road. And she, being Miss Perfect, is imagining herself there, dancing, twirling in a white dress, to the tune of a Mozart piece.
I don’t listen to Mozart. I don’t own a white dress. I don’t dance. And I drive my Mom’s mini van.
And over and above all those other reasons not to dance in the rain. I hate “looking like a fool”. I would rather hide in a small cave and poke my head out once in a blue moon, while hiding under a large black umbrella, than stand out there and get soaked. I don’t care if the others ARE having a water fight and attempting to  enjoy the general dampness of life. If I can live in my cave and journey abroad only under my large black umbrella. Life is good. Unless someone tells me to dance. In the rain.
Someone told me to today. Not word for word, but in essence. “This is the way things are, work with it”.  But that means I have to go out in the rain, with out my umbrella. It means I have to interact with all those water fight people. It means I have to be there for the person who got water dumped in their face. It means I have to join a team and work together with them. It means I have to listen to someone else boss me around. It means I have to be willing to get wet… And dance while I’m at it.  It means I have to lay aside my pride and fear of looking like a fool. It means I have to remember, Who’s making it rain.
Who is making it rain. Wow. How often do we look at that side of it? It’s raining for a reason. Something is dry and needs the water, something is going to grow because of this. Something is going drown. And it’s your choice if you’re going to grow, or drown.
Drowning has always been one of the most nightmare-ish ways to die in my mind. The desperate flailing, trying to stay above water. That burning feeling as you swallow mouthfuls and it comes out your nose… The deafness, because even your ears are full. The blurred and stinging vision, because your eyes are full. The tingling as your adrenaline pumps, but your body continues to slowly shut down in the chilly water.  The panic, as all you can think of is , “air, solid ground, breath”. Every sense is consumed in one thought, saving, who? Yourself. In the very act of drowning, your selfishness is exposed for the world to see. 
On the other side of it is growing. The darkness as you’re buried under the heavy wet soil, the searching for light and realizing that in the act of doing this you’re losing who you used to be, your shell is coming off, you’re going to be exposed for the world to see all the ugliness you fear is inside. Or not? In searching for the light and reaching upwards have you shaken off the old? Are you going to burst through the darkness, clean and stretching towards light? And as soon as you see it you know. It’s worth it. It’s worth the pain, and the stretching, it’s worth losing who you knew yourself to be. The person you’ve been carefully protecting under your shell. Sure the rain is stressful, sure it shakes the beauty and tempts you to give in and sink back into the ground. But with out it, you’d die.
So even if you don’t dance. We are called to do at least one thing: Go stand in the rain, and smile.