When is the Rain Coming? | A dialogue on longing, expectations, and drought.

To know me is to know that I love working with people. Nine times out of ten, you will find me craving human interaction and because of this, I’ve truthfully enjoyed the positions I’ve held in communications and public relations. What you may not know is that for a short period of time I thought my occupation of choice was going to be an agronomist, but as I’m sure you can assume those ambitions came to a screeching halt after I took (and hated) my first agronomy class at Iowa State. Nevertheless, my interest in crops remained. I still pick the brains of the agronomists I work with and make sure to read the copy of Wallaces Farmer that arrives in my mailbox each month. One of the things about agronomy that there is so much to learn, and there’s no way you could ever know it all. A fun fact, for example: did you know that corn is a grass? Yes, I mean grass as in that thing you have to bribe yourself into mowing before your home looks abandoned. If you don’t believe me, look it up. I swear it’s true!

This has been the best summer ever in terms of lawn mowing duty because it’s been minimal. Up until a nice rainfall about two weeks ago, my lawn was dry, crusty, and crunchy. But do you know what didn’t succumb to the lack of rain? You guessed it, the corn. Even through the scorching heat of July and August, our taller and more commercially produced grass fared much better than our lawns. Why is that? I won’t confuse you with the details of each, especially because I don’t entirely understand it myself, but the bottom line is that plants like corn are more efficient in their water usage and are ultimately more drought-tolerant than plants like the grasses in your lawn. Neat!

I promise I’m almost done geeking out over corn, but I just think that’s so interesting. We received an amount of rainfall that was several inches less than an average year and there’s still a crop to harvest. I am certainly not claiming that yields will be exceptional or that you couldn’t see signs of stress in the crop all summer, but it was going to take a lot more than a severe drought for that corn to give up.

Seeing acres of corn start to wither but never give up got me thinking about drought. What is a drought? Yes, I realize it’s a lack of rain, but in a broader sense. I’m always a sucker for a good dictionary definition, and my good friend Merriam-Webster serves up this one:

“a prolonged or chronic shortage or lack of something expected or desired”

Read that again. Go on, scroll back up and really read it. I’ll wait.

A lack of something expected. In the case of farming, or any literal drought, we’re lacking rain. But what are some other examples of a drought? We’ve all experienced them. What do you expect and desire but continually come up short on?

You were laid off from work and are still searching for a new job.

You’ve moved to a city, but you can’t find a sense of community.

You’re wondering if your season of singleness is going to last forever.

You need just one person in your circle to listen to you, but you can’t find an ear you can trust.

You long to be genuinely happy even though you wake up each morning feeling less than content.

You want to find peace in your existence, but the constant push and pull of life makes it difficult to merely get through the day.

Pick one of these that resonates with you. Or, take a moment to think of another drought of your own. What is your drought? What is the thing you’ve been awaiting and craving for what feels like an eternity that never seems to arrive?

The thing about droughts is that you never know when they’re coming, or when they’ll be over. They don’t give you a call a few weeks in advance so you have time to clean up the guest bathroom and change the sheets in the spare bedroom. There’s no time before they arrive to prepare space for them in your mind and in your heart. Instead, a drought shows up on your doorstep like your free-spirited Uncle Phil on Christmas Eve: no warning he’s coming, no set date for his departure, and gifting you a holiday ham you don’t even want.

Not knowing when a drought is coming or how soon it will leave is challenging. But the worst part of drought is that you can’t do a thing about it. Sure, you can take steps in an attempt to make the situation better: if you’re searching for a job, you can submit hundreds, thousands of job applications. But at no point do you have the power to say, “Okay, I’m tired of being unemployed,” snap your fingers, and pull a job offer out of thin air. You can make casual friendships or go on dates will a million different people, but you can’t force relationships that aren’t meant to be.

Being in a drought you can do nothing about is a difficult place to find yourself in, and the knee-jerk reaction is often to follow in the footsteps of our lawn: Give up. When the hoping, waiting, and longing becomes too much we give up all too easily. In the same way our beautiful backyards get crunchy and crusty, our hearts become weary. Our minds are drained. Our souls, forlorn. When the job offer, best friend, or boyfriend don’t arrive on our timeline we let our hopes dry out and convince ourselves that if the rain doesn’t come today, it never will.

I can’t tell you when the rain is coming. I don’t know when your drought will end and when the stream in your heart will overflow. What I do know is that letting your hope dry out is not the answer. Remember the corn we talked about earlier? You would be amazed at how high the yields have been so far, given the pitiful amount of rain we received. Am I an agronomist? No, but I guarantee the plant didn’t fill those ears so nicely by just giving up when precipitation stopped falling. That doesn’t mean the effects of the drought can’t be seen. It can be observed in the field and yield data is showing it, too, but to say the crop just threw in the towel and completely withered up would be a lie.

When corn is growing, it needs water. If the rain doesn’t come, the crop sets out to find it by penetrating its roots further down into the soil to hunt for moisture. When you find yourself in a drought, you can’t force circumstances to change and simply giving up should not be an option. But droughts, my friend, are the perfect time to dig deeper into ourselves. Just as corn does, take root in your values and dig your heels in to your beliefs. I’ve seen all too often people who lose their way in their drought: they take jobs they know they’ll hate, befriend folks who are unsupportive, or thrust their way into relationships that are unhealthy. But this, compromising on your values, beliefs, wants, and needs? It’s like putting a bandaid on cut that needs stiches.

I’m not saying this is easy. In fact, it can be quite a chore. Putting roots down when things aren’t going the way we want or expect them to can be scary. The act of grounding, of active self-awareness and self-assurance exposes the parts of ourselves we don’t want to acknowledge and the needs or wants we can’t fill. As someone who is relatively independent, this is something that’s always been difficult for me: I like to think I can design a life and control my circumstances, and that when things don’t roll off as expected it’s because of what I have or have not done. But I’m no fool- I know that’s not how life goes. Addressing my droughts over the years have been some of the most raw and arduous moments of reflection I’ve experienced, but also some of the most beneficial opportunities for figuring out exactly who I am. Turning inward and analyzing what exactly you want, rather than focusing on filing those wants/needs for the sake of filling them, forces you to look those desires and expectations straight in the eyes asking, “Why are you here?”

When I say to root down into your values, I mean it. It can look like prayer, meditation, journaling, or a slew of other processes. Who are you? What do you stand for? Doing so might not bring the rain, but it can sure keep you going strong until it arrives. The drought of your own you thought about earlier? Get a piece of paper and write it down, or open the notes app on your phone and type it in. Then, when you’re ready, think about these questions as they relate to your drought and your beliefs (you don’t have to stick with these but this should be enough to get you started):

Why am I longing for this?

How does going through this drought make me feel?

What do I think it will feel like when this drought is over?

How will I know this drought is over?

What are some ways I have (or have considered) flexing in my values to end this drought? Did doing those things bring a steady rain a quick shower?

Is it more important to me that I find a temporary solution to feel like the drought is over, or to wait for the right answer and know the drought is over? Why do I think this?

Going through droughts is one of the many uncomfortable and weird parts of being a human. Even though I wish I could tell you when it will be over or what exactly you should do in the meantime, I can’t. I don’t have those answers. But this season of trying, hoping, working, longing, and praying is just that- a season. Droughts are painful, but they are seasonal. Dear friend in the meantime, dig those roots in and grow. I promise the rain is on its way.