When You’re Praying for Flowers, but the Rain Comes First

We pray for flowers.
We beg for beauty.
We want the outcome.
The full bloom, the color, the story that turns out exactly how we pictured it.

But then the rain shows up.
Not a soft, movie-scene drizzle.
No, I’m talking about the sideways kind of rain.
The kind that soaks your socks, ruins your hair, and fogs up your plans.
And our first instinct? We resent the rain for not being the sun. 

I was watching The Voice the other night when a girl found out she didn’t make it to the next round. Through the weight of that moment, Carson Daly asked if there was anything she wanted to say to her coach. Without missing a beat, she said:

“Sometimes you spend so much time praying for flowers that you can’t be mad that the rain came first.”

Come on. That’s not just a sentence. That’s a sermon.
I had to rewind and hear it again.
What a perspective.
She didn’t just see the loss as a dead end. She saw it as part of the process. Part of the watering.

We all love the idea of the breakthrough.
But nobody is fond of the muddy middle that leads us there.
However, rain is not just necessary.
It is sacred.

Maybe your rain looks like a door that closed without warning.
Or a conversation that changed everything.
Maybe it’s a delay you didn’t choose, or a dream that feels stuck in place.
A season where nothing is going the way you thought it would, and every update feels like another setback.
You’re holding it together, but wondering if the bloom you prayed for is ever coming.

But what if the rain is the answer?
What if the pain you are walking through is preparing the soil?
What if the pause isn’t punishment, but protection?
What if God is watering something underground that is about to break through, and you are too focused on the storm to see it?

The clouds. The mud. The mess. The unanswered questions.
They are not signs of God’s absence.
They are signs that He is at work beneath the surface.

If you are standing in a storm right now, muddy, confused, and miles from what you prayed for, don’t run from it.
Don’t wish it away.
This part matters too.

Because one day, when the petals break through, you will look back and realize that the rain didn’t bury the dream.
It actually brought it to life.

God never wastes the rain.
Even when we do.
He sees what’s blooming, what’s buried, and what’s still becoming.
And the spot you’re standing in?
It’s not the end of the story.
It’s just the watering before the wonder.

The flower doesn’t come before the rain.
It comes because of it.
So keep praying for flowers.
But don’t forget to thank Him for the rain.