Rainbow over Loch Lomond

Date: 12 November 2008 22:25:00

Our trip to Scotland was undertaken with very mixed emotions. It was difficult for all of us. My brother is very very close to my eldest son, who is like the son he never had, and my son had spent many weeks staying with his uncle to give me a break over the last two years so that my brother's home was like a second home to him. In that time, the Smudgelet and I haven't been there at all. But this holiday had been planned for some time - a chance for the three of us to go up there together and for the Smudgelet and me to have a holiday while eldest son did a fortnight's work experience with the Loch Lomand Countryside Rangers. To go to Scotland regardlesswas always going to be hard... for all of us, eldest son included... but not to go would have been worse. For Smudgelet, of course, it was harder still. He had all that to think about, but also he had to adjust to our first holiday away without him having anyone to share with. He so so missed his brother, and also felt incredibly angry with him for not being there. Our trip to Loch Lomond was a strain because the Smudgelet's mood matched the dark and brooding sky before the heavens opened. He was not going to enjoy himself and neither was he going to allow us to. But that was before the rainbow! The rainbow did it. The most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen. A magical moment to see that, arcing over Loch Lomond and the Maid of the Loch. Everyone raced to see it, cameras at the ready. It broke the mood for Smudgelet who was delighted with his success in capturing it on film. Next Sunday Smudgelet has been invited to lead Sunday School, telling the younger children a Bible story of his choice. He has chosen Noah's Ark. Somehow I think the rainbow had more meaning for him than simply some colour in the sky. I know it certainly did for me. I've come to see the rainbow as the best possible image for a hug from God. Sounds soppy, I know, but once more we have a circumstance which could be coincidence but seems to stretch the credibility of being so. Because this rainbow that broke into a dark time when the Smudgelet and I were mourning our semi-loss of eldest son is not the only special rainbow I've seen. Ten years ago, when my mother was seriously ill and had decended into unconsciousness, there came a day when it really sank in for definite that this was an illness from which she would never recover, that she really was going to die. I sat for some time in the hospital chapel (where, to my amazement, the Bible was open at my favourite reading, Psalm 139) and was simply silent with God. On leaving the hospital I glanced at the sky, and there, arcing right above me and seeming to end in the grounds of the hospital itself, was a beautiful rainbow. It felt as though God was saying "I know things seem very dark right now, but you are not alone. I promise it will be OK and I will be with you". Two years ago I was talking to a friend about this while I was nursing my Dad through cancer, shortly before he was taken into the hospice for the last time. I can't remember how it came into the conversation, but I said how I had been comforted by a rainbow when my mum had been terminally ill. As I talked and cried and thought about losing my father, I happened to look up into the sky. You've guessed it, of course - another rainbow, just as bright and strong as before. "I know things seem very dark right now, but you are not alone. I promise it will be OK and I will be with you." And now, when it feels as though my world has fallen apart, another rainbow. My mum's favourite hymn, and unsurprisingly one of mine too, was "Oh love that wilt not let me go". We sang it, with gusto, at her funeral. "I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain, that morn shall tearless be." I praise God for his undying and unconditional love for me, that I really don't have to do this in my own strength, that no matter how lonely this road may feel, I am never alone and He walks alongside me and carries me when I can go no further.