Rainbow

I was thinking of a clever and deeply meaningful title for this post, but there really isn't one - or a need for one.

The evening of the last post, Maya and I were driving back home, and the entire ride home, about fifteen minutes, in a rainless sky, in a high, fuzzy, billowy evening-colored cloud bank lighted up by summer sunset, there was a left arch of a rainbow. Beautiful and pronounced. Some atmospheric oddity. Or what I without question felt was the answer to my ongoing prayer. I kept looking straight at it, as it was always in front of my car, and simply felt secure and assured. At some point I questioned if I wasn't imagining it, but there it was, and still was, and still was even as we turned onto our street.

So you know, you see. It's a strange dichotomy of being spiritually firm and lifted up while living in emotional chaos. Even the most intense emotional swings are subdued in part due to high physical stress of commute, still-broken sleep, attempts at high-powered lengthy concentration in the office, and overall simple physical inability to process emotional extremes fully. Maybe that's for the best in a way. But through the 'refinery' of this I feel a solid bedrock that even through the worst days moves not. And that's awesome, and incredibly encouraging. He does lift me up. Or He simply doesn't let me go down.

For the most part, I have been able to superimpose this grace onto the kids no matter what because the sense of responsibility for what they're exposed to is really high, it's like an imposed awareness of what I look like and sould like to them at all times. Perhaps I'm really, *really* sensitive to that from some of my own kid experiences. But that's OK if the end result is measured words and measured approach to them no matter what. Some times it's harder than others just because some times all I really have left in me is strength for a few stumbling footsteps to fall on my bed, but as old adage goes, parenting takes no breaks (no prisoners, either).

Though it's such a bother in countless other ways, the long commute does give me a chance to privately worship through music, to find echoes in lyrics that are meaningful to me, to cry when a certain truth hits home more than before. "When all of a sudden / I am unaware of these / Afflictions eclipsed by glory / I realize just how / Beautiful you are and how / Great your affecions are for me..." (I used to hum this song a lot to Jack when he was first back from the hospital on oxygen and Mom was still here and the whole house could be cut rigid with stress).

It is possible to feel tired and strong. Wronged and right. Humbled and powerful. In fact those combinations become more meaningful. I've never believed in God, or trusted Him, more. It's a huge relief to know that some changes, should they take place, are simply not up to me - but neither are they up to others. I choose to follow a Miracle Worker, and relinquishing the fear and angst of attempting miracle-working myself is unreal relief. It allows faith in seemingly impossible, in seemingly gone and lost, in seemingly irrevocably damaged.