For those of you who know me, and for those of you who don’t, I hate rainy days. It hasn’t always been this way. As a child, I loved when it rained. My street flooded easily, so when it rained my siblings and I would run outside and play in the water. If you think that playing in the rain makes you sick, I say you’re wrong. I played in the rain my whole life and never once did I get sick from it.

I guess I spent so much time playing in the rain that I never practiced keeping dry. I feel like I am the only one who fumbles as much as I do with my umbrella. At school I also have to add a backpack to the mix. Between my coffee, my backpack, my umbrella, and the rest of me it is a pretty interesting thing to watch. Looking around I can see people taking pictures of me. I seriously look that ridiculous.

Trying to keep dry

Here are some of the unfortunate events that have happened to me on rainy days: my umbrella broke (like completely ripped in half), I have been splashed by not one, not two, but by three cars, I have also been splashed by a bus, my umbrella touched a car and its alarm started going off, mosquitos have eaten me alive, and the list keeps going. Like I said, I hate rainy days. There is a reason we have that phrase “save it for a rainy day.” Rainy days are bad. Terrible. Dreadful.

Walking to my car in this rain today, I was rolling my eyes about every 2 minutes. I am not even kidding you. My annoyed level was off of the charts. At some point I even stopped avoiding the puddles. There was no point. With every car that drove past I would secretly wish that they would take my to my car. (I was parked quite a ways out.) By the time I made it to my car I simply no longer cared. I was done. This day was lame and I wanted nothing to do with it anymore. It is when I am in these moods that I feel like God laughs.

The inspiration for action

A silly idea popped into my head as I was leaving the lot. I bet there are a lot of people that don’t want to walk to their cars in this rain, either. Do not be fooled here. This was not the first time that this thought had come to my pretty little head. Not by a long shot. The needs of other people are quite obvious when you simply open your eyes and look. Usually, I brush off the thought and go home. This time was different.

My big mouth has been running all week. I have had an amazing opportunity to speak to different teenagers about Jesus. In doing so I told them that it was time our actions backed our words. We say we want people to know Jesus, but what do we do to make that happen? When we want something really badly, we tend to make some sort of effort to get it. When I want my hair to look nice, then I wake up an hour earlier to get it that way. Looking at our actions, do we really want people to know Jesus?

This was my moment for my actions to match my words. I drove to the front of the parking lot to offer a ride. The hardest thing of this whole plan was asking that first person. I built up some courage, rolled down my window, and my first offer was shot down. At this moment I wanted to say that I tried and just go home. I didn’t. I asked someone else. They took me up on my offer. That was a little more fun than I thought it would be. I asked another person. Then another. After 20 minutes of driving up and down this lot I had to make myself go home.

No one was extensively grateful. They were appreciative, but possibly may never think of my act of kindness ever again. That’s ok. Honestly, what I did was nothing special. It was simply being nice. No pat on the back is deserved for this, because I should have been doing it all along.

There is a tape in my house of little Destrea at her preschool graduation quoting Ephesians 4:32. Do you remember what that says? “Be kind to one another…” Too many times we are kind when it doesn’t make us go out of our way. What about when it does? I did not talk to those people in my car about Jesus. There was no meaningful conversation. However, there was something very important that happened here. I showed these people that they were important to me, because they are. And the only reason I feel that those people were important is because God sees them as important. For that reason alone I do not regret my decision to drive people to their cars, and I will continue to do so in the future.