Life is a continuous learning experience. One of the questions I most enjoy asking older people is what life lessons they have learned along the way. It is also a question I return to often in my own heart.
In Finland, when people talk about shopping, they sometimes jokingly ask each other how much “stuck” to them along the way. I have always loved that expression. I can so easily picture myself wandering through Citymarket or Prisma while Moomin mugs, Iittala plates, and Tupla chocolate bars seem to leap off the shelves and somehow fasten themselves onto me before I reach the register. The longer I stay, the more I seem to carry out with me.
Life lessons can be like that too. As we walk through life, things cling to us. Wisdom. Insight. Understanding. Some lessons brush past us lightly. Others stay, marking us forever.
We all have our days in the valleys and our days on the mountaintops. And wherever life takes us, it teaches us something. When I look back over my own life, I can see certain lessons attached to certain seasons. Some I learned quickly. Others took years. A few, I am still learning now.
One of the hardest lessons for me, and one that has taken a lifetime to learn, has been to accept the things I cannot change. I am a doer by nature. If something can be fixed, I want to fix it. If something can be changed, I want to change it. But learning when something simply has to be carried rather than cured has been much harder for me.
And yet, this very lesson has brought some of the deepest peace into my life. There is a quiet relief in finally accepting that things will not always go the way I hoped they would, and that fighting against what cannot be changed only wearies the soul. Acceptance carries its own kind of peace.
Perhaps it was only natural then that the next lesson waiting for me would be this: to learn how to dance in the rain.
That has been the lesson of this year.
My husband Peter had a heart attack that nearly killed him while I was waiting for him to join me for a holiday on the other side of the world. He needed triple bypass open-heart surgery. Around the same time, I was only just beginning to emerge from two long years in which my own health had deteriorated so badly that I could see no clear way through. Although I feel better now than I have in years, I know I am still only at the beginning of my way back.
So I find myself asking: do I wait to live until the storm passes, or do I begin to dance now?
It is such a human thing to believe that life will begin again later. That joy must wait. That peace belongs to some future season when the sky is clear and the ground beneath us feels steady again. But I am beginning to wonder if life is not only found in the waiting for the storm to pass, but in what we choose to do while it is still raining.
Dancing in the rain is not about denying the storm. It is not pretending that the wind is not fierce or that the clouds are not dark. It is about choosing to live anyway. To laugh anyway. To notice beauty anyway. To keep your heart open anyway.
Life is never made up of sunshine alone. It is always both. Sorrow and joy. Rain and light. Tears and laughter. That is the truth of it. And perhaps the lesson is not simply to endure every kind of weather, but to learn how to dance in the midst of it.
A sudden rain still reminds me that I am not in control. But it also reminds me that I still have a choice. I can lift my face to the sky. I can feel the wind. I can breathe in the rain.
And perhaps, somewhere in that dance, I will find the lesson my heart has been trying to learn all along.
Apples of Gold 
This is the lesson I am learning too, slowly but surely. A couple of days ago I listened to an Estonian Lutheran minister and he said he feels the contemplative life is not about setting goals but about learning to live in the present moment, about being willing to welcome pain (what am I learning) and about relationships being what is most important, though we cannot hang on to even these. I find it hard not to be in control but I’m learning to trust that after death of any kind, comes life. Christ in us. Thank-you!
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What wise teaching from the Estonian Lutheran minister! It is hard to not be in control, yes. I remember after my car accident, a wise counsellor said to me that my life would be a whole lot easier if “instead of fighting it, I learned to ride the wave”. I guess my life since then has been exactly that, learning to ride the wave. Easier said than done. Thank you for your thoughts Anne-Marie!
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Just read this. Amazing really. It is by James Finley from his book, ‘The Contemplative Heart’ and he quoted Thomas Merton.
“Contemplative wisdom discerns that we hinder ourselves in our ongoing self-transformation when we catch ourselves expounding, through clenched teeth, the principles of a dance that our own self-absorbed rigidity will not let us dance. But no matter how foolish and broken we may be, compassionate love is always ready to drain the fear-based rigidity out of the situation to the point that we might begin to recognize our ever present invitation to join in the general dance of God, one with us in our brokenness. The dance never ceases to stir within us, beating “in our very blood whether we want it to or not.” [2] The dance is deathless, childlike, and free; an infinite Presence wholly poured out in and as the concrete immediacy of who we simply are, beyond grasping in any way whatsoever. [3]”
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You have once again given me food for thought! I love it! “The dance never ceases to stir within us!” I kind of worked out I’d soon start learning about the significance of the dance! Instead of the “storm” teaching me, I am beginning to understand it’s the “dance” itself that will be teaching me. Thank you!
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Also to you….both of us learning to dance….
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Yes, it’s a process!
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At the risks of over complicating things, I wonder if just as light is both a wave and a particle, so is the dance…..The dance is always stirring within us and we are also learning to dance…I wonder if it is more about surrendering to the dance, losing ourselves in it, which of course we cannot do on our own. It happens unexpectedly out of the blue and it is a gift of grace. We find ourselves swept up in something bigger than ourselves.
I’m also thinking of Rowan Williams and his series of talks called ‘The Body Knows’. It is only the body which is able to be in the present moment. The mind is always darting here and there, into the past or into the future as I well know. The heart too….Maybe when we are in our bodies, we have a chance of allowing ourselves to be held. We become more aware that God is breathing through us and in us. All is well!
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These are great thoughts! Worth pondering! Maybe it’s more about letting go, rather than learning.
I like Rowan Williams’ thoughts as well. The secret seems to be in becoming like children.. Jesus himself said: …”unless you change and become like little children…whoever humbles themselves like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”. A child is able to be present in the moment.
I think of my two year old granddaughter. She sits on my lap and allows to be held. Every time I spend time with her, I learn from her. And how I adore watching her dance!
I think you have some great pearls here. It does happen unexpectedly, out of the blue and it’s a gift of grace!
The times that I have felt like I’m dancing in the rain, when somehow supernaturally I have felt peace and joy despite the struggles I am going through, I know I have been swept up in something much bigger than myself!
I think about the absolute peace and calm that Peter (my husband) faced his open heart surgery, how he was able to even calm me every time I spoke to him on the phone, I know was not his own efforts of learning to dance in the rain, but it came from outside of him, as a gift of grace. He surrendered to the dance and he lost himself in it. It was a powerful testimony to me and a gift of grace to both of us.
We became aware that God was indeed breathing through us and in us!
I had this picture in my mind of us sitting in a rollercoaster asleep!
Thank you Anne-Marie! You have blessed me this morning!
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Always dance in the rain! Whether physically, mentally or metaphorically. You spread your arms out, close your eyes, lift you face to the sky and twirl around. Its like feeling God touching you and giving you some sort of peace. Sounds childish, I know but every chance I get, I have danced in the rain physical, mentally and metaphorically. I hope it rains at least once while I’m there. We are going to go outside and dance in the rain together like our inner little girls. While it’s more of a physical experience, believe me when I say it puts everything you’ve said into perspective. Mawmaw always said “there are always sayings for everything but when you can actually experience those sayings physically it makes them saying come to life.”
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Your mawmaw indeed was a wise woman! What a fantastic saying! I love the wisdom of it!
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Ummm let me correct that…🤭
Mawmaw always said “there are always sayings for everything but when you can actually experience those sayings physically it makes them come to life.”
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Yes!!
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Dancing in the rain is an art form I would love to learn. I have not accomplished it yet, but I’ll keep trying.
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Maybe we can’t even do it in our own strength. Maybe it’s a gift of grace. Before I left to Finland, I remember repeating time and time again to Peter: “It’s beginning to rain!” I just felt so strongly that it was about to start raining in our lives. My thoughts went along the line of showers of blessings. We so badly needed those showers of refreshing after the two years we had just had. I didn’t know that the rain was about to pour, especially on Peter. Blessings can come in so many different forms. Maybe that’s where the saying: Blessings in Disguise comes from. Maybe it’s like Anne-Marie says, and it’s not so much about us learning to dance as surrendering ourselves to the dance. Maybe we will never learn to dance in the rain from our own strength. Maybe all we need to do is let go, surrender and receive. I don’t know, I’m only just learning about all this myself. But one way or another, dancing in the rain seems to be the life-lesson for me at this time in my life.
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Just thought of the ‘Lord of the Dance’ hymn. Here is the refrain:
Dance, then, wherever you may be;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.
And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be, And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.
We don’t actually have to get the steps right….
Thank-you for all your comments….
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This is true! We do not have to get all the steps right!
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