NO RAINBOWS WITHOUT THE RAIN

Rainbows, actual literal rainbows across the sky, have seemed to follow me the last couple of months.  I am one of those people that forever and always exclaim over them and chase them and stare at them until they fade away.  (I imagine this is a shocker to anyone that knows me. 🤣🤷🏻‍♀️🌈)  Obviously, I know how they work - the sun hits the water droplets and boom, an arch of color across the sky.  Even with that (sketchy) head knowledge, I find them truly amazing.



Obsessing over rainbows certainly falls squarely within my personality profile.  I love beauty.  I love fun.  I love out of the ordinary, and rainbows check all of those boxes.  Large chunks of my heart really wish that life was all sunshine and rainbows.

But, it hit me when we were on vacation in North Carolina - you don't get rainbows without the rain.  The beautiful colors stretching across the sky do not appear on cloudless, sunny days.  They only accompany the rain.  In the case of our NC trip, there was a lot of rain, and also on that trip, we got a lot of rainbows.

I have always wanted the good without the hard.  I guess as I write that I realize that in our human flesh, we all want that to some degree, but my wiring seems to desire or expect it more than most.  For much of my early life, I had so much good that I was fairly swimming in it.  And if something wasn't good, I usually found a way to see the bright side or turn it in to a positive.

My young adulthood sent me on a different path with true hardship and pain.  And my current adulthood (am I actually middle-aged now?!? 😱) is punctuated by difficulties on all levels.  This year in particular, I've felt victimized by my life, which is its own problem that I've been working out in counseling all year.  Bless my counselor's heart.

I've been fighting with God over how HARD certain things seem.  I expected our family life to look differently than it does.  I want guaranteed outcomes on how my children will turn out.  I imagined John's work life would iron itself out into neatness.  Instead, we are struggling in so many areas.  It does not look the way I wanted it to look, and I have fears about what it may look like in the future.  I've been facing our current realities and grieving future possibilities.  Basically, it's been a cloudy time with more than a chance of showers and thunderstorms.

But even in all of that, I've seen the goodness of the Lord.  He never leaves or forsakes.  He promises goodness and faithfulness and himself.  A couple of weeks ago, a friend sent a verse that has offered me much encouragement and hope.  I wrote it up on our chalkboard to remind myself.



Psalm 84:11-12: For the Lord God is our sun and our shield.  He give us grace and glory.  The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right.  Oh, Lord of Heaven's Armies what joy for those who trust in you.

There is always so much good to be gleaned through the hard.  And while the good by-products would never "justify" the pain, I am certainly thankful that light does indeed penetrate darkness.  Joy comes in the morning, and often, rainbows come after the rain.  But we don't get one without the other.