Raise a Glass to Lousy Weather

This has been a very special and relaxing week. Pat and I are in Napa Valley with some of our best friends and it has rained on us the entire time. The local weather girls keep proclaiming to the bay area that there has been more rain accumulation in the last 4 days than there was in every day of the last year combined. The grey skies and cool air are soporific. We have enjoyed lots of time by the fire and all have indulged in extended naps.

We have put on our raincoats and boots and ventured out to enjoy amazing food and to tour local vineyards and wineries. Weather talk has been pervasive no matter where we go. During our wine tours, we learned how weather affects the taste of wine. About 75% of the wine we have tasted was harvested in 2012. 2012 was a drought year in the valley. The grapes produced that year were much smaller and stressed out, and as a result they yielded delicious wine. When a vat of grapes is filled with smaller fruit there is proportionally more skin than juice. The grapes are pushed, pressed and squeezed and the flavor-rich skin is utilized to fashion fabulous wine.

When the weather is perfect, grapes don’t get stressed out. When there is the perfect balance of sun and rain and pleasant temperatures, grapes get big and fat and watery. Happy grapes turn out inferior wine.

Stressed out grapes are sweet encouragements to me. I often wish for calm seas and pleasant conditions, but the stormy clouds of life have helped deepen my flavor. The scars and bruises that occur from years of being squeezed and pressed and pushed are the very marks that make my life beautiful.

It breaks my heart when I observe seasons of drought in the lives of my children. I watch them struggle to understand academic concepts; I see them end up on the losing side of the scoreboard or get excluded from social opportunities. I would love to have the capability to shield them from all of these tempests, but I know the storms and scorching days are beneficial.

We all learn more when we are challenged. The few who are born with silver spoons in their mouths and never experience raindrops don’t develop real depth or richness. As hard as it is to rejoice when suffering and stress is present, there is an accessible peace in knowing the current squeezing produces amazing fruit.

The wine producers in the Napa valley are celebrating the drought of 2012. They can look back on all the stress and irrigation challenges from that year and taste the bounty before them today.

Most of us can review our stormy seasons and offer up praise and thankfulness for the way they produced a richness and beauty in our lives. As we are comforted by the way pain has molded us, we can rest in peace that the storms won’t destroy our kids either. Our job is to give them appropriate weather alerts and umbrellas or sunscreen and then let them venture outside. We are not guaranteed sunny skies in life, but we are promised shelter from the storm and beautiful fruit if we endure.

It can be nasty out there, but Let’s Raise a glass to the lousy weather.

 

“But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, 6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, 7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. 8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:5-8 (NKJV)

 

“For You have been a strength to the poor, 
A strength to the needy in his distress, 
A refuge from the storm, 
A shade from the heat; 
For the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.” Isaiah 25:4 (NKJV)

 

“Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11 (NKJV)

 

 

“These bruises make for better conversation

Loses the vibe that separates

It’s good to let you in again

You’re not alone in how you’ve been

Everybody loses, we all got bruises.”

(Lyrics by “Train”)