September 22, 2025

During storms, my basement sometimes floods. It starts with a trickle that seems manageable, almost harmless. But the last time it happened, the rain was relentless. Before long, water was pouring in faster than any pump could keep up.

The only pump I had was a little one from Home Depot, the kind better suited for aquariums than basements. It whirred away with determination, sending out a thin stream of water, but the flood kept outrunning it.

My friend Andrea was with me that night. Together, we scrambled to contain the damage, moving boxes, setting up buckets, wringing out towels. For hours, we worked in a frantic rhythm, our shoes sloshing through cold water as it spread further and further across the floor.

Eventually, exhaustion set in. Every bucket we emptied seemed pointless, every towel already soaked, every gallon the pump managed immediately replaced by another surge from outside. I remember sinking down on the steps, my body giving up before my mind could. I cried, not just from the flood itself, but from the weight of feeling powerless.

Andrea looked at me and said something simple but profound:

“The rain will stop.”

At first, the words barely registered. They did not magically make the water recede or lighten the work still ahead of us. But they shifted something inside me. Andrea was not promising an instant solution. She was reminding me of something I had lost sight of. No storm lasts forever. The sky would eventually clear. The rain would eventually stop.

Those words became a seed that rooted itself in my mind. Since that night, they have grown into a mantra I return to again and again. Whenever I have faced something difficult—heartbreak, grief, exhaustion, moments when life feels unmanageable—I have thought of those four words.

And I have realized they have always been true. Every painful season I have lived through has eventually passed. The floodwater receded. The heartache softened. The uncertainty found clarity. The rain always stopped.

That does not mean the damage was not real. My basement still needed drying out. My heart still needed mending. But storms are temporary by nature, even when they leave their mark.

These days, when life feels overwhelming, I pause and remind myself: the rain will stop. It does not mean I can avoid the work of pumping out the water or sitting with the hard emotions. It means I can trust that the worst of it will not last forever.

And I think about that little pump, the one meant for aquariums rather than basements, working away in the corner. It was never enough to beat the storm, but it was enough to keep us going until the skies finally cleared. Life is often like that. We are equipped with tools that feel too small for the job, yet they carry us through one thin stream at a time, until the rain stops.

The rain will stop. It always does.