Rain, Runways and Rebounds

In the early days of June 1944, the largest invasion force ever assembled sat waiting off the coast of England, and the sky refused to cooperate.

General Dwight Eisenhower had a decision no single human being should have to carry alone. Nearly three million men, seven thousand ships, and months of planning built around one narrow window of tide and moonlight. And the weather would not settle. His meteorologist, a Scotsman named James Stagg, kept walking into headquarters with forecasts that shifted like the band market. Rain. Wind. Rough seas. The invasion, originally set for June 5th, was scrubbed at the last possible moment.

Eisenhower paced and smoked as he waited on a report he could not control, for an outcome that would define the rest of the century.

Then Stagg came back with something unexpected: a break. A short window of calmer weather forming behind the storm, just long enough to move. Not perfect conditions, but just good enough. Eisenhower made the call: "Okay, let's go." June 6th. D-Day. The storm hadn't ended, it had simply cracked open a door, and an entire army walked through it.

I try to think about the temporary nature of a storm every time I'm sitting in a season that feels stalled out by weather I didn't order and can't control. A slow market. A hard conversation still ahead of me. A prayer that hasn't been answered on my timeline. It's tempting to read the clouds as the whole story. But sometimes the storm is the very thing clearing the runway for what's next.

Boston knows something about this too. In 2004, the Red Sox were down three games to none against the Yankees in the ALCS, a hole no team in the history of the sport had ever climbed out of. Eighty-six years without a title stacked on top of that deficit. It looked finished, but they waited for a break in the clouds. When finally showed, it became the greatest comeback in postseason baseball history, four straight wins, and a championship that broke a curse nobody thought would break. The storm wasn't the end of the story. It was the setup for it.

Psalm 65 paints this picture with more beauty than I ever could. David writes:

"You drench the plowed ground with rain, melting the clods and leveling the ridges...even the hard pathways overflow with abundance." (Psalm 65: 10-11) 

Notice what the rain is doing there. It's not just falling, it's working. Softening ground that's gone hard. Leveling ridges that have been stubborn for a season. Getting into cracked, dry soil so something can actually grow in it. The storm isn't interrupting the harvest. The storm is how the harvest gets prepared.

Eisenhower couldn't see June 6th while he was pacing through the rain on June 4th. The '04 Red Sox couldn't see game seven while they were down 0-3. And most days, we can't see what our own storms are preparing us for either. But Psalm 65 doesn't ask us to see it. It asks us to trust the One who sends the rain in the first place, and to keep showing up while it falls.

What storm are you sitting in right now that might actually be softening ground for something you can't see yet? Instead of asking God to remove the storm today, ask Him what He might be preparing you for on the other side of it. Then do the next right thing in front of you.