Rain Zach Fauver

All my life I have hated rain. If I woke up in the morning and it was raining outside, my day would be ruined. When I was younger, I played outside whenever I was not in school. We would go exploring in the woods, do different projects like build tree houses and elaborate forts for turtles we would catch. But rainy days would force me to stay inside all day, bored out of my mind.
As I grew older I continued to despise the rain. Waking up to a warm, sunny day brings joy and excitement. A rainy day is filled with gloom and depression, making me tired all day, even if I got plenty of sleep. When forced for some reason to be out I the rain, I always run to wherever I’m going. My friends tell me that you get more wet when you run in the rain, but I tell them, “I don’t care I just want to get out of the rain faster.”
This summer on a three week backpacking trip to Scotland, I had a major perspective change about rain. I expressed my rain hatred to Dr. Reddick and he made some positive response along the lines of “oh no rain is wonderful, it brings life and color to the earth.” So for the rest of the trip I made a conscience effort to have a different outlook on rain. The first came early in the trip. It was early evening when dark clouds began to role in. Soon after we where in the midst of violent winds and sheeting rain. Simply experiencing the magnitude of the power that the rain had gave me a spiritual wonder about the power of God’s creation. The second and more significant experience came at the end of the very last day of hiking. I was a little les the a mile away from the hotel where we would be getting on the bus, and knowing that I was early I stopped to take a nap. I found a plush mound where I closed my eyes and fell asleep. When a woke up, a light rain that three weeks earlier would have been completely bothersome to me, was beating down on my face. Instead this rain brought me peace and joy. It was a beautiful moment where for the first time I loved and appreciated rain for what it was, and not as an inconvenience. Since then I can not say that I love the rain the same way I did that day, but I certainly look at it differently then I did before.