I Asked for Rainbows
Prism
This is about how light
is always rainbows,
Invisible until broken
How some things must
be frac-
tured
To be seen
How sometimes you need to
break your own sacred heart
To learn your truest colors
How each imprisoned shade of you
scatters, dances
When kissed by the light.
On my sister’s birthday, I asked for rainbows.
It was a kaleidoscopic weather day, in which the clouds move faster than your racing heart and the sun and darkness shift fluidly like rising smoke and the rain falls on your upturned face but so does the light upon your shoulders. Light and dark, sun and rain, wind and stillness. Is anything beautiful without contrast?
My family has been in a season of weeping. The hardship and grief has lasted longer than any of us could have fathomed, which is why I let God know that yesterday would be the perfect day for a rainbow to appear. We needed to be reminded of our promise-keeping God. The conditions were perfect—light after rain after light. How hard could it be?
On my sister’s birthday, I searched the sky expectantly all day. There never was a rainbow.
Often I have tried to cajole God into giving me an epic sign in the heavens that speaks of his love, when all God wants, probably, is just to be with me. As I drove across the White River Valley to spend the day with my sister and family, the rain fell in torrents on my car—so thick I could hardly see. In the midst of my composing final words to Drew and my loved ones, plus singing at the top of my lungs to feel brave about it all, I also grumbled under my breath about the rain and the season of weeping it represented.
I asked God why I couldn’t just stop crying and feeling so deeply, and I think this was God’s response:
“What if this rain in the valley is me weeping with you?”
What if, indeed.
As much as I like to control and understand my pain by assigning God the role of “Silent, Unhelpful Witness to Suffering” and me and my family the role of “Deserving Sufferers Who Cannot Find Relief So Help Us,” I just don’t think God’s heart is so small as to see God’s beloved children suffering and not be moved to tears. If God is merely a stoic, silent onlooker to suffering, then why place our life and death in God’s hands?
When his friend Lazarus dies, Jesus shows us the grief-stricken face of the invisible God. This God apparently weeps over suffering and death, even though the power of life and death are in his hands. Even though he knows the end of the story.
So why weep? Why mourn and lament when everything is going to one day be made well?
We weep because every second, atom, and molecule of this life matters. We weep because it is the only appropriate response to injustice, grief, and loss. We weep because there is Someone who “keeps count of our tossings, catches every one of our tears in his jar” (Psalm 56:8). Did you know that your tears have a different chemical makeup than other water your eyes produce? Our emotional tears have a higher protein and hormone content than tears shed from responding to irritants like chopping onions or the tears that escape our eyes during sleep.
The fact that God created our eyes to shed different tears depending on the state of our hearts tells me something about how tears and our emotions matter. In researching tears, I learned that our emotional tears even produce a natural painkiller. Don’t we always feel a bit better after a good cry?
Psalm 84:5-7 describes a people on pilgrimage who travel through the Valley of Baca.
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
As they pass through the Valley of Baka,
they make it a place of springs;
the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
They go from strength to strength,
till each appears before God in Zion.(Psalm 84:5-7)
Baca means weeping in Hebrew, which is why the New Living Translation interprets the same passage this way:
What joy for those whose strength comes from the Lord,
who have set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
When they walk through the Valley of Weeping,
it will become a place of refreshing springs.
The autumn rains will clothe it with blessings.
They will continue to grow stronger,
and each of them will appear before God in Jerusalem.
I am not a Hebrew scholar, and I do not pretend to know exactly what these verses would have mean to the original Jewish audience, but I do recognize poetry when I see it. As one who tries to practice poetry in word and in life, here is how I read Psalm 84:5-7:
Although all may seem lost, those who pass through this life weeping will eventually find the God they seek.
Their tears will water the earth around them, bringing unexpected life in the valley and blessing every place their feet may wander.
Drinking the water of tears and eating the bread of affliction will make them stronger than they ever knew possible.
These tears will sustain each weeping pilgrim on the long journey Home, where at last they will meet their heart’s longing face to face in joyful reunion with the silent Companion who was with them all along.
On my sister’s birthday, I did find a rainbow. Or rather, a rainbow found me.
As I was sitting at the dining table, a bright gleam of light shone and fractured through a sun-catcher prism hanging from the kitchen window, casting a brilliant and vivid rainbow onto the wall behind me. Later that night, I sent Drew a text with a picture of the rainbow on the wall. My text read, “I can’t believe how light is always rainbows, but we don’t see it until it’s broken.”
His response:
“Dang. I guess I just read this week’s Behold.”
To go deeper: