30% Chance of Rain

My poor neglected blog.  I have a few extra minutes which is unusual so I want to sit down and let my kids know that life doesn't always turn out how you want it to and that's okay.  Your happiness is determined by your attitude.  That's something I've learned over the years and really, I'm still learning.  Today, was another learning experience.  Our primary presidency (Sister Kranz, Sister Johnson and Sister Dean) had planned an Easter activity.  The past two years, we've had an Easter Egg hunt for the primary kids and they've been great.  They've been in the park, we've had great weather, neighborhood people have joined us, and we've had fun.  This year, we wanted to make the activity one for our whole ward (congregation) so that everyone could invite their friends to enjoy an afternoon together.  The kids would hunt eggs, we'd picnic, enjoy baked goods that had been made for the bake off and then play in the park.  We advertised with flyers, emails, etc.  We said we'd move it to the church if it was raining, but we were hoping we wouldn't have to, because the park setting would be fun, easier for a hunt and also gave the neighborhood a chance to see us and join us.  We had Easter treat bags ready that had Easter-themed pass along cards and Easter activity books with the name of the church, address and meeting time.  We were going to have the missionaries pass out the Easter goody bags.  We really wanted it to be something fun that would also give people a chance to learn something about our church who might not know anything about it. 

We had a righteous desire for ideal conditions so that people could come with their friends and other people could join us and learn more about our church.  I prayed all week, not for good weather but for the Lord's will to be done concerning the weather for our activity.  I prayed over and over that people would come and enjoy themselves.  I checked the weather and did not let myself get too disappointed when the rain started on Wednesday and didn't stop until Thursday.  The 5-day weather broadcast changed from sunny days to all rainy days.  Then Friday we had a really nice day and Saturday was supposed to be cloudy and only a 30% chance of rain.  I woke up this morning with the sun peeking through the shades and I said a prayer that the activity would be enjoyable and that those who were invited would come.  Then as we were leaving for the park, checked the clouds and they were high and it was a mostly sunny sky.  So we set up for the activity in the park.  The sun hid behind clouds and it cooled down but then rain clouds moved in and as people started coming, it rained.  We had a few canopies and it wasn't bad at first.  The kids still hunted but the rain kept coming and it was cold so it wasn't like we were going to hang out in the park.  Adults went out and helped collect eggs after awhile and people worked together to take down the tables and canopies that were set up.  So a planned 1 1/2 hour activity with a bake off and kickball turned into a rainy egg hunt and then everyone headed home to dry off.  We could have moved the egg hunt to the church earlier but the sky looked great and there was only a 30% chance of rain.  70% chance of no rain and that seemed like good odds. 

So kids, when you read this, what I want you to understand is that Heavenly Father heard my prayers and everyone else who was praying for the activity.  Just because He didn't stop the rain doesn't mean He's not there or that He's not listening and mindful of everything.  He cares about the activity we planned and He cares about everyone that was invited to come.  He cares about the missionaries who also helped spread the word.  He cares about everyone.  I believe that He could have stopped the rain from coming but He didn't need to.  Sometimes it's important for us to learn lessons from the times that things don't turn out as planned.  It's very easy to see tender mercies and recognize miracles when good things happen.  We can easily attribute the hand of God in things that work out but we also need to recognize the hand of God in our lives and how He is there for us when things don't work out as expected or how we had hoped.  We choose our happiness.  We choose to keep the faith.  Also, there are always blessings that come from situations like this.  We got to see how really cool people are.  They are dependable and they can keep positive attitudes even when things don't turn out optimally.  We got to see people work together so the kids could still have fun and then they worked together to help take down canopies and tables.  Working together made it so much easier.  It was kind of cool to see friends just pull together.

My current favorite scripture is Psalms 84:11, "For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly."

The Lord will give grace and glory.  He will not withhold blessings, but remember that the blessings are there, even if they aren't the ones you thought you needed.  He is a sun and a shield.  I love the imagry of that.

And guess what?  It stopped raining and the sun is peeking through the clouds again.  It rained only during our activity.  And that's okay.  I could say so much more about this.  There was a time where I wondered why did your father and I buy an airplane and then he crashed it.  We had felt so strongly that we were supposed to buy THAT airplane.  Why would we feel strongly that we were supposed to buy THAT airplane?  We knew it had been inspected and we didn't know that there was pinched tubing in the wing that no one could have seen.  That pinched tubing made the airspeed indicator incorrect and your dad thought he was flying fast enough to make the turn but really he wasn't going fast enough so it stalled.  Why would we feel like we were meant to buy THAT airplane when something so terribly wrong happened after we bought it?

Even though there are things that don't turn out the way we want them to, even when we pray, we can still have faith.  When we say, "Thy will be done", we have to mean it.  Even when we don't understand the Lord's will or even when we have to suffer because of the choices of others, we can choose to have faith in a plan of happiness.  We may not understand everything right now, but we can always trust that our Father in Heaven loves us and wants us to live with him forever.  Some hardships are big and some are small (like our rained out activity).  Our Father in Heaven wants to know that we will turn to Him know matter how big or small the hardship.  We can have faith in our Savior and our Father in Heaven through the good times and the hard times.