Dampen your spirits.

On my wedding day, nearly twenty years ago, it was a typical Donegal day: sunshine and showers. We got in to the church in the sun and for a short while afterwards it stayed dry. But then the heavens opened, nearly everyone headed to the reception and we got our photographs taken in the church. Two cars did stay behind and tooted their horns behind us through the town. The funny thing was, after months of planning, the rain did not bother me one tiny bit.

As a glass half empty type, it was utterly out of character to be that happy when I would normally be disappointed.

I was watching a group of women sitting in a hot tub last weekend. The rain was splashing on their heads, into their champagne flutes and the water but they were clearly having a grand time. Despite the weather.

That can be a huge challenge to most of us at times. To acknowledge our difficult circumstances and still hold on to hope. I paused over the last word there because I know the idea of joy or happiness can feel so out of our reach sometimes. Mother Teresa herself said ‘My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains… [People] think that my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing, and that my intimacy with God and union with his will fills my heart. If only they knew.’*

Sometimes it is so hard to see beyond the bad weather of our lives, but there has to be a lifeline for us somewhere. It could be our family, our friends, or as it is for me, our faith. A good friend reminded me that she had seen rainbows on that changeable day when I got married.

Can you be that person?

Or do you have someone like that in your life?

I’m pretty sure I married him..

*Bruce Johnston, ‘Mother Teresa’s Diary Reveals Her Crisis of Faith’, Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2002.