A Rose in the Rainstorm
The rain had been falling since morning, steady and cold, drenching the streets of the small town where Hannah lived alone in the weathered house with the blue shutters. By afternoon, the gutters were full and the sky was a heavy slab of gray. Hannah didn’t mind the rain; she rather liked it. It made the world seem honest. You couldn’t pretend much when the sky wept openly.
She stood at her kitchen window, staring out at the overgrown garden. The rose bush her late husband, Paul, had planted on their first anniversary stood tall despite the wind, its petals defiant and red. It shouldn’t have been blooming—April had only begun—but there it was, one stubborn rose nodding beneath the weight of water.
It had been five years since Paul died. Five years since the accident on Highway 16, a wet road, a curve too sharp, a call at 3:17 a.m. She remembered the way the officer had looked at his boots, the way the word “sorry” had felt like a blade through bone.
After the funeral, people came. And then, as quietly as the storm that had taken him, they stopped coming. Grief, she learned, had a way of thinning crowds.
She made tea. The house creaked and sighed, the way old houses do when they carry memories. On the table lay a stack of mail she hadn’t opened. Among them was a white envelope with no return address, addressed simply to “Hannah.” She stared at it a moment before setting it aside.
Instead, she picked up Paul’s Bible. It still smelled faintly like him—cologne and earth. The ribbon marker lay in the Psalms. Her eyes fell on a verse underlined in his faded ink: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”
She closed the book and pressed it to her chest.
Then, on impulse she couldn’t name, she grabbed her coat and stepped outside. The rain soaked her instantly. She walked barefoot into the garden, mud curling around her toes. She knelt beside the rose bush and touched the bloom.
It was warm, impossibly warm. As though it held the sun inside.
Something shifted inside her—a slow untying of a knot that had held too long.
From the house, the phone rang.
She let it ring. The petals trembled beneath her fingers, and she knew—Paul was gone, yes, but not lost. There were kinds of presence deeper than sight.
The next day, she opened the envelope.
Inside was a note written in a hand she didn’t recognize.
“You are not forgotten. You are not alone. He sees you in the rain.”
No name. No explanation.
She kept the note by the bed, beside the rose she had plucked and placed in a glass.
A week later, a boy from the neighborhood knocked on her door. Small, with mismatched boots and a gap in his teeth.
“Ma’am,” he said, “I think I found something that’s yours.” He held out a small silver locket. Inside was a photo of her and Paul on their wedding day—one she’d lost years ago, she was sure of it.
“Where did you find this?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Down by the creek,” he said. “In the mud. But it looked like it was waitin’ for somebody.”
She thanked him, pressing a few bills into his hand. That night, she held the locket under the porch light and cried—not with despair, but something softer. A letting go. A holding on.
The rose bloomed again two weeks later. Then another, and another. Soon the bush was full, fragrant and wild.
People began to wave when they passed her house. One neighbor dropped off bread. Another asked if she needed anything from town. The mailman smiled.
Sometimes, grace arrives quietly.
One day in early May, the pastor from the church she hadn’t entered in years knocked on her door.
“I was wondering,” he said, “if you’d like to come by this Sunday. We’re planting a new garden. Could use your touch.”
She almost said no. The words were right there, ready.
But something held them back.
“I’ll come,” she said instead.
The rain didn’t fall that Sunday. The sky was open, blue, wide. The garden behind the church had only dirt and hope, but she brought a clipping from the rose bush. As she placed it into the ground, her hands steady, a breeze stirred the trees, and she felt it again—that impossible warmth.
In the months that followed, the blooms came faster. Not just on the rose bush, but in her life. A child waved from the swing set across the street. A woman she’d never met asked if she wanted to start a book club. One night, she sang to herself while washing dishes, and the sound didn’t feel strange.
And still, sometimes, it rained. But she didn’t mind.
Because in every storm now, she remembered the rose that bloomed when it shouldn’t, and the note with no name, and the locket returned by a boy with muddy boots.
She remembered that Scripture Paul had loved. And she believed it—not just in her mind, but somewhere deeper.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted.
Even in the downpour.
Especially then.