Missing Rainbows

It happened again this week.

Per the credible news sources that we lovingly call Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, there were rainbows everywhere. Not surprising, since I feel like it has rained incessantly for days.

Know how many of those rainbows I saw in person?

One. If you count the tiny quarter of one I saw in my rearview mirror as I left work one day. And it is possible, though it's 3700 kinds of embarrassing to admit this, that I may have nearly wrecked my car twisting around in my seat to try to catch a glimpse of it.

Seriously. ONE RAINBOW! Out of the kajillions reported {and captured in photos, so they must be true}, I saw one quarter of one out the very side of my rearview mirror, as I rounded a curve, no less. By the time I turned onto a side road, where I could have seen it, it was gone.

The thing that baffles me most is I have no idea how I keep missing them. A couple of days ago I walked inside the front door of the station, after carefully scanning the sky and deeply absorbing its beauty...and all over Facebook were photos of rainbows. Did I see any of these? Nope! And I was just there!

It seems to be my lot this year. I'm so close...and yet I miss them every time.

I love them so, because I'm a tangible reminder girl and these rainbows are the tangible reminder of God's promise to never again flood the entire earth.

My own personal earth {Bekahland...Shafferland} feels a bit {translated: entirely} flooded right now. I keep telling myself that if I could see a rainbow...if God would set one in my own personal sky...I would be comforted to remember that He's got me.

And yet it seems like everyone around me sees the promise and I don't.

The literal collides with the symbolic in my brain. I don't get real rainbows or heart rainbows. And all those around me seem to get both.

And the one time I catch a glimpse of one, I nearly wreck myself trying to get a full view.

Anyone with me? Anyone else feel that way sometimes?

It is in this moment that I force myself to remember a lesson I learned in the desert a few years back. I didn't have a hope of a rainbow then either. My goodness, the sky hadn't nearly cleared enough. It was monsoon season in my world {and pouring from my eyes as well}. And in those days when I felt like all God's promises had come for everyone but me, I clutched my Bible tightly against me and through gritted teeth said, This I will call to mind and therefore I will have hope: because of God's great love we are not consumed. His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.

Just because I don't get to see the rainbow in the sky doesn't mean it's not there. Just because I don't feel His promises doesn't mean they're not there.

I'm choosing to believe. Choosing to call to mind the hope of His faithfulness in this season of waiting. In this season of confusion. In this season of need.

And I'm also choosing to believe that one day {soon} I will see that rainbow in all its literal and symbolic glory and you can KNOW I will be taking a picture. Cementing that faith-made-sight moment forever.