The Day the Rainbows Came

It happened on a morning that promised to be another long, harduous day. The deadlines I was facing that week were enough to make me feel cramped and tight in the chest. It was only 6:30 am and already the mugginess was suffocating. Just what I needed to lighten things up a bit, I thought.

I don't do good in the heat. I needed some air. I opened a few windows facing the shady part of the house. My attention was immediately drawn to a faint noise the light rain made hitting the leaves of the trees alongside our driveway.

I remembered leaving the windows of my car open overnight. Quickly I rushed out to roll them up. Running back towards the house, something nudged me to look up. There it was, a double rainbow arching over the lake, the sun bouncing off the tree line on the opposite shore.

Just like that, my world stopped. I forgot about the heat, about the deadlines, about yesterday and how miserable I was when I got home the night before. Mesmerized, I stood there in the rain, feeling the warm drops gently falling on my face, smelling the earth exuding its aromas from the steaming grounds.

In that moment, I was reminded that no matter what happens in my world, no matter how overwhelmed and inadequate I might feel in any given moment, there are miracles occurring all around. That even in moments of high stresses, when I wonder if my days matter, Life has a way to tell me WHY it is all worth it!

As I continued to marvel at the matching colors of the rainbows, I heard in the background of my thoughts a quote from Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. “The weakling who has refused the conflict, acquiring nothing, has had nothing to renounce. He alone who has striven and won can enrich the world by bestowing the fruits of his victorious experience. ”

I was the one who was striving, facing the conflicts of my daily life, endeavoring to be greater than the reasons why I should be miserable. This double arc was bridging the rain to the sunny shore. Its presence was telling me there could be no rainbows without the rain.

In that moment, I wondered what kind of rainbow would come out of my struggles. In that moment, no matter what they were, I knew they were all worth it!