Not Forgotten

Twenty-three work days. That's all we've got between me and the last day of serving as producer. That's not many day!! Yesterday I hosted my last full-length interview, with this hilarious Melanie Shankle of the Big Mama blog. I had a great time with her...thankful for those of you who lifted me up in prayer for that last interview!

Besides doing my regular work, I've been cleaning out files and perusing through memories of the last four years. Among them...blog posts I wrote for the Mid-Morning blog. I ran across one that I remembered so vividly. It was from just a little over a year ago, when Ryan and I were in the middle of waiting for his house to sell. Mercifully, we didn't know that we still had about eight months left before that sale would be final, or I'm not sure we would have been able to stand upright.

We were, as always, too busy for our own good. Our entire house had just been uprooted for new plumbing...and the yard took a literal uprooting as well. We'd lived in dust and messes for far too many days, and my poor mom had come over day after day to watch over the place while the plumbers worked.

On this particular evening, Ryan was busy repainting trim that had been damaged in that adventure. I was busy catching up on all kinds of projects I'd slipped behind on during the mess. And as I worked online, I began to see an outpouring of pictures of a stunning rainbow. It was all over Facebook. Every friend of mine, it seemed, who lived in a 20 mile radius had amazing photos of a vivid rainbow with a faint second one hovering above it.

Feeling weary from life and in need of my own personal visual proof of God's promise, I practically threw my laptop across the couch and dashed out the front door to search the sky for the beauty.

And it was gone.

Not a trace.

I came back inside and slumped onto the couch, scrolling through more versions and angles of the rainbow, and thought {with more than a trace of bitterness}....I need a promise tonight just as much as they did. Why do I always feel left out of the promise?

And even as quickly as those thoughts formed in my brain, God gently reminded me, The promise is there, even if you don't see it.

It's there. It's no less real and certainly no less valid just because I didn't get to witness it in that moment. And so it was for our world on that day. I {again, mercifully} didn't have a clue what would happen in our foreseeable future, but I knew in my heart that didn't mean God wasn't working. I knew it didn't mean He had forgotten the good He promised to us.

Ever had that kind of week? When you can't see the promise and you feel like you missed it? Like it somehow applies to everyone but you?

God taught me that week to lean on the proof I saw in the lives of others. The proof that He's there, working, and won't fail on His promises.

And last week, He taught me a new truth through a new rainbow.

Ryan and I were driving to Gatlinburg, and the Lord blessed us with a beautiful day for a drive. Sunny, blue skies...and about halfway there, this:

I saw it, turned to Ryan, and said, Is that a rainbow? It didn't rain!

Rainbows tend to be our reward for getting through the deluge. And likely, somewhere in this vicinity, it did rain that evening. But for the two of us, driving down the road, we got to enjoy the blessing of the promise without a deluge preceding it.

God immediately reminded me of the rainbows I missed...of the times I ran outside to see the promise and felt I'd been left out. And this time, He sent the promise without asking me to go through the rain to see it.

Sometimes His blessings are just like that.