Of Rainbows and Promises

“Do you know what rainbows mean ?” my little brother in law, just finished grade one, asked me. “They’re from God. It’s a promise that He’s never going to flood the world again.”

He said that two days in a row because we saw rainbows two days in a row. After the second time  I realized that Someone was trying to get that message through to me. 

The rain comes down so hard on my life. It’s pooling, congregating, flooding the land around me. I’ve swam for so long that I’m beginning to tire. But the rain keeps pouring. It certainly looks like He might flood me. I know God’s not going to flood the whole earth again, obliterate everything, everything. But more importantly, God is not going to flood me. He’s promised that too. He’s not going to send any more rain than I can swim in. He’s not going to make the puddles so deep that I can’t touch the bottom on tip toe occasionally, keeping my head above the water. 

It’s sometimes hard to believe that and that’s why the wiseChild’s words were like a hammer pounding it into my hard head. He had faith -God promised Noah so of course He wouldn’t flood the whole world again. I’m jealous of his faith. 

Missing the Messy

Summer stole my job (life of a teacher) and now my life is much less messy. It’s been a  nice week, easy, exhaustingly lazy, zero challenge, bordering on boring. That’s good. But

I’m not sure I like my life this pristine. 

My life isn’t perfect. have problems. I really do, big ones, overwhelming ones. And then I have my husband. He’s amazing. I love him a lot. But no relationship isn’t a little messy. My life isn’t perfect. But it’s me, and it’s normal, and mostly I’m in control of my mess So it’s relatively pristine. That’s why I teach school. Children are messy. People are messy. They trigger a lot of extreme emotional reactions -mostly love, sometimes worry, even frustration, much joy, confusion, discouragement, laughter. And you are entrusted with then care (and education) of a group of children, there is never a moment when you’re not hyper aware, of them, what they’re doing. And now it’s just me by myself all day and my eyes don’t need to be 5 different places at once and there’s not always someone waiting to tell a story or ask a question. 

And

Im realizing that my parents succeeded in teaching me at least one of the things they wanted to. That life is messy and that’s the way it should be and if it’s not very messy, then maybe you’re staying too close to you and too far from others.  

Who knows how the summer will go. Maybe it will stay pretty clean and uncomplicated. And if it does I will be happy. But if I end up getting my heart a little messy, I’ll be happy with that too because pristine gets a little dull. 

How about you ? Ready for some pristine?  Or do you like a little human involvement and the messiness it brings? 

It Is Real

I’m sorry for how I am today.. I’m sorry I’m so unreliable and tear stained. I’m sorry I’m acting  the way I am. Believe me. If I knew how to make myself stop feeling this way I would.  

I don’t even know how to tell you why and how I feel. 

FlowerGirl was in my arms and someone was coming toward me to take her away and she was saying “no no” and crying and holding on to me. And then I woke up with tears in my eyes which I tried to get rid of cause it’s not a good way to wake up. But I couldn’t. And so now it’s lasted all day. 

But it goes back farther than that. This isn’t the first time I’ve dreamed about her. And I don’t talk about it because I know I’m going to cry and be sad and because it’s Difficult to talk. 

So now you know a tiny bit. 

This was me one day, too many days, since August. I hope days like this are over. Sometime I imagine that healing has started and the grief won’t ever hit so hard again. But time will tell. 

Good Words

Later I thought of how ominous it sounded, and had I been feeling guilty that’s probably how I would have taken it to begin with. But instead, the words were comforting God is with you.                  

He is with me my heart echoed; I rejoiced in the feeling. I know that God is with me, I always know that. But I don’t often actively  remember that fact to delight in it and take comfort from the fact that God is with me.                                                            

But today I did and that was because of a vivid white and black sign set beside a busy highway unashamedly reminding me, God is with you.

Going Forward

I Chose 

Sorrow for 2 precious children I  loved and lost. 

But going forward I choose 

Celebration for the chance  I had to love them. 

I Chose

Fear of my little sisters’ future, and of mine without them. 

But going forward I choose

Faith that God will take care of them and me

I Chose

Bitterness at the people who took away our greatest Joys

But going forward I choose

Forgiveness and a hope that what they did was the right thing

I Chose

Selfishness, believing my Love doesn’t need to be part of  my pain

But going forward I choose

Sharing my hurts with him, understanding that when I hurt, he hurts too 

I Chose

To bury the amazing happy memories that make me miss my tinyGirls incomprehensibly

But going forward I choose

To remember and to rejoice in the memories and in the love and bond of sisterhood that we share 

My dreams

Bring them to my mind almost every night and I wake up with Fire Girl and Flower Girl vivid in my mind and my heart crying. 

I Chose 

To use these dreams and thoughts to make me sad, to remind me of what I lost. 

But going forward I choose

To think of them when I wake up, with a prayer for their happiness and safety and to cherish my memories of them as a precious gift

I’m not the only one mourning the loss of people I love. Loss comes to different in so many different ways, I see now, and, it seems, no matter how much you know it’s coming it’s always unexpected.  Love and tears to you who are mourning the loss of someone you love. The Sunset Watcher

A Promise Breaker

Do you keep all the promises you made to yourself ? I don’t. While going through a pile of childhood memorabilia I ran across a 10 year old list of “Things I’ll Never Do When I’m [An Adult]” I was a idealist 13 year old and a child of a missionary too, remember that. 

(some of) The Things I’ll Never Do

Say bad words. 

Wear high heels

Talk bad about people

Flirt with boys

Drive fast

Listen to (bad) music 

Be cliquey 

Be snobby 

Drive anything but a GMC [vehicle].

Be ashamed of my religion

Dress immodestly 

Have a boyfriend 

Be on my phone a lot 

Wear expensive clothes 

Be proud 

Be unkind

I broke all but one or two of those righteous idealism’s in a matter of a year or two and I never quite made it to adulthood with even one of those goals to my name. And. I survived growing up. And.  I survived being a teenager. And. Here I am. I didn’t make too many massive irreversible mistakes. And in fact, I might even say I’m a better person for having done most of these things. Committing each “sin” made me realize either why it’s not so bad or why it’s something I don’t feel comfortable doing l, and has helped me grow and understand how I should live and how God wants me to live. No, I’m not perfect, but I have learned a lot. And yes, I’m a person who, unfortunately, learns from my own mistakes and not from other people’s. 

For one thing, it didn’t take long til I came to my senses and realized FORD was a lot better than any Chevy product. Much later, I adopted and, even later, finally conquered the disgusting habit of swearing and today it’s not really something I deal with much. I wear high heels (though not impossibly so), I drive fast (but not when there’s a possibility of moose hiding on the roadway in the darkness). I’ve spent too much time listening to, thinking about and talking about popular secular song lyrics and melodies and it’s taken too long for me to understand that a lot of these don’t do anything (good) for me. I wear visible signs of my beliefs and that’s been something I’ve wrestled with too. I don’t like standing out and being so different from other people and, sadly, I’ve been ashamed of my beliefs. Time and different happenings in my life have contrived to  change this and teach me to treasure these outward symbols of my love for God. They are a treasure: a tattoo, not a brand. I’ve been a proud person, a snobby person, and unkind person; not sure I’ve conquered any of these. I have spent time on my phone that I should have spent connecting with the people around me. I did flirt with a boy once and that turned out well for me; he’s now my husband and now I can flirt with him every day! 

I don’t think I’ve covered everything on that list yet but that’s okay. This isn’t confession time nor is this to say I’m perfect. It’s just musings, ways I’ve grown and changed in the last 10 years. It’s fun to look back over time and see how life has changed me. It hasn’t all been easy and in fact quite the opposite at different times, but I’m alive and happy and my life is quite beautiful.