Answers With the Rain

I’ve known my fair share of heartbreaks. But the hardest one of all was when I had to break up with someone that I deeply loved. The next few weeks were jumbled-up days of deep depression. I barely ate, slept, or really functioned at all. Worse, I was angry with God. Before I started dating my ex, I had prayed to God countless times about him. I knew this could turn into something real, and I didn’t want to get my heart broken again.

I pleaded for God not to let the relationship go any further if I wasn’t going to end up with him. Also, I asked him to show me a sign, or at the very least for it to not work out. But it did; it seemed like everything fell into place so beautifully, and I dated him for two years. When things started to get rocky in my relationship, I began to pray more and more. Then one day, we broke up, just like that. I felt so lost and empty inside. My depression gradually started to turn into anger, and I slowly lost my faith in God.

Happy With the Rain

About two weeks after the breakup, I was driving to work on a gorgeous day. The sun was shining, the air was warm, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. As I made my way to work, I began to get angrier and angrier, and I started to shout at God as tears poured down my face. I cried to God, asking Him why He let this happen to me, why He didn’t answer my prayers. How could He let this happen to me?! I had prayed repeatedly! He was supposed to answer them! But I heard nothing except an empty silence, and in a depressed haze, I walked outside toward my work. As a last resort, I prayed, “Please, at least let the sun stay out—I need the sun. I need some happiness.”

But as my mood got worse and worse, so did the weather. By the end of my shift, clouds had gathered in the sky, and by the time I walked outside, it was pouring. I was about to give up. But then the wind had picked up so strongly that I had to fight against it physically. It began shrieking as it whipped around the tree branches overhead. The rain was beating down on me, and the screaming wind tried, again and again, to knock me down.

The weather almost seemed angry, like it was mirroring how I felt on the inside. At that moment, I felt strangely at peace, strangely happy at the weather that I feel connected to. I lifted my arms to my side, fighting the wind and laughing as I struggled to stand my ground. Smiling, I lifted my face toward the dark sky and felt the rain cascading down my face.

Something Better

The funny thing is, I had truly thought I wanted the sun, but it turned out that I was so much happier with the rain. I didn’t know I wanted it, I didn’t know I needed it, but God did. He didn’t answer my prayer for the sun to come out because He had something better for me, something He knew I would be happier with. He didn’t answer my prayer in saving my relationship, but he did show me that he has better things in store for me, something or someone I will be much happier with. And for the first time in two weeks, I felt like I was going to be okay.

If you liked this, you might also like Praying for No Rain | Unanswered Prayer

Katelyn Mendez writes from the Pacific Northwest.

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