Windshield Wipers

I walked out of my house last weekend. It was a beautiful, sun-soaked morning. The sky was painted blue and there wasn’t a cloud in sight.

Living in the Northeast, it hadn’t looked or felt like that in six months. This was the first beautiful weather day of the new year (as a side note, I do love snow and cold, but in terms of true spring weather, this was the first).

I jumped into my car, turned it on, and was surprised to see my windshield wipers scraping across the bone-dry windshield at top speed. Seriously, at the top speed. The setting you click to when it’s raining so hard that if it’s not on the top speed, you can’t see the car in front of you. The setting that you’re surprised your windshield wipers even have and that you’re thrilled they have when it’s raining like that.

I clicked them off and could barely remember why they were even on. It was so sunny and blue out that it felt like rain, at any time, was an impossibility.

I thought back to the night before. I remembered that it rained. I remembered that it rained so hard that I was soaked just walking from my car to the pizza place and back. I remembered that I was driving fifteen miles an hour to avoid sideswiping parked cars. And how there were six-inch puddles in the street and empty garbage cans blowing down the block. I remembered the sound of the rain on the windows was more banging than tapping.

But this day was the opposite, and I almost forgot that the previous day was different.

When we’re in it, whatever it is, it can feel like it’ll never end. That the tough times keep coming, with no respite in sight. It can feel like the drenching rain will drench us forever.

But it changes. It always does.

Unlike the weather, which changes regardless of what we do, it usually takes action to change a circumstance. But still, it changes.

Remember that if it’s pouring on you right now. One day soon, you’ll start the car and the wipers will be blazing back and forth and you’ll barely remember why.