A few days ago, I sat in the living room and watched the rain suddenly come pouring down. The funny thing is, from where I sat, all I saw was sunshine! I turned to look out the window on the opposite side of the house and said, pretty much to myself, "ok, where are you?"
There it was. Right where I thought, my buddy the Rainbow. I grabbed my camera and keys (just in case) and went to the porch to snap a few pictures. That's when I saw it.... for the second time in my life - the actual end of the Rainbow!! I could literally see the brilliant colors of it glowing down over a couple of trees right across the neighborhood!!!
I decided that this time, i wouldn't pass it up! You see, a few years ago, I did just that!!
It was during some of the worst days of my life. Depression like I've never experienced before. A loneliness and sadness so overwhelming that my soul was literally in torture...my mind anguished. Darkness enveloped me.
If you were VERY close to me at the time, you may have understood a little, but no one then or now can truly know the full extent of what I was going through at the time.
My husband and I had separated, very publicly, which that in itself takes a toll, all on it's own. I had to have a surgery that, even though I didn't want anymore children, now took that option from me. Wrecked and totaled my van and only a few months later I was taking care of and saying goodbye to, my dying mother.
I had reached a place that it was physically painful to get out of bed, socialize, eat, talk or take care of myself because the sadness was so.... thick. Yet, I had no choice but to keep pushing through. To keep being "ok" for everyone else, and do the things I needed to do. There was and never has been, come to think of it, a time that I have just sat and mourned all the loss. I just went from one to the next, to the next.
One of my many trips back home after being at dad's in the midst of it all, it was raining. I went back a totally different route than I normally do, and still to this day won't go, unless I feel the need to emotionally go "back down that road." It was that road, going towards mom and dad's, I had taken for some odd reason, the day mom died. It was on that road as I rushed back after desperately needing to sleep after weeks of deprivation, without interruption, that I was told to pull over by my sister, before she would answer my question: "Is she gone?!" It was on that road that I threw my phone down, screamed and cried out as all the worst emotional, mental, physical and spiritual pain I had ever felt, all came together and came rushing out of me.
I can only think that it must have been after I was going back home to stay that I was back on this route. On the phone with dad, in the rain when I saw it. One of the most beautiful, bold, brilliant rainbows I've ever seen!! As I was telling my dad, I looked to my right, and there in the middle of a field was the end of the rainbow.....
I've asked myself 100 times why I didn't go back that day and just stand in it. Take it all in. To see if it felt different, looked different, smelled different. I know I thought about stopping, and some of the reasons I didn't were the fact that I was on a 70mph highway at the time, it was raining and well, I would have felt silly trespassing to stand in someone's field in the midst of all of that...... yet so many times I wish I had. I wish I had just let loose, abandoned all caution, common sense and insecurities and danced in the rain right in the end of the rainbow that day.
Convinced..... convinced that there would be some sort of peace and magic found in it!
Until the other day when I put my key in the ignition and drove toward trees and the portion of neighborhood where I could see it once again. I took off, camera in the seat beside me, heading straight toward the prize, following the direction of the glow..... until I was sure I must be in it.
However, to my utter dismay, there was nothing special. I didn't see anything special, I felt nothing different. I couldn't even see that I was in it!! Yet I knew it was the right place.
As I drove back home the thoughts that immediately came to my mind were this;
Did the people who's houses it shown on, even know they were in it? Did they care? Have I ever been in it and didn't know?
And that got me to thinking this.... how many times have we stood right at the end of the rainbow, totally unaware? How many times have I? Looking continuously for something better when all the colors from Heaven are shining on me in the moment I'm in?
How many times has my heart been black still mourning past hurts when there's color all around me right in the moment?
How many colorful moments have I missed while settling for the drab and dark because I think I don't deserve beautiful?
It has also occurred to me that often, I've ignored the colors that are right in front of me. Looking for more bold, more beautiful, more perfect. Just a right dab of this, a perfect shade of that, looking at it in just the right lighting and trying to find that perfect beauty in the next best thing.... while missing out on what's right now!
As I write this, I realize now, how glad I am that I didn't have a life changing moment at the end of the rainbow. I'm glad it caused these reflections, musings and some soul searching. I'm glad because from now on, I promise .....
I promise myself to appreciate the colors that are right here right now. Right in front of me.
I promise to look deeper when it seems dark and to scratch at the surface until I see the colors.
I promise to only look back when my story helps someone else get out of their dark moment.
I promise to only look forward in anticipation of how my story unfolds, and not with fear or longing.
I promise me, that I will feel today's blessings today, leave yesterday's where they belong, and let tomorrow's happen as they should.
And I promise myself that I will look for and try to find the rainbow in every situation. Even and especially through the tears...a rainbow only appears after the rain and sometimes it's after the heaviest storm, when it's most brilliant and more appreciated anyway, right?
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