Rainbows

Today I had the honor of sitting for an hour with two beautiful ladies. We sipped a warm drink and admired each other and talked about home life, family and our feelings about who we are. I thought as I sat there that I wish times like these didn't have to end but there were appointments to keep and a little boy to pick up from school. We lingered as long as possible until the cell phone reminded us that our time together was up. So my daughter picked up her daughter and we ran to our cars as the rain started coming down.
As my appointments came to an end another beautiful daughter stopped by to visit for a little while bringing her laughter and 3 sweet children to brighten the end of my day. As we began our dinner preparations, the rain stopped, and the sun appeared and with the sun came the most colorful rainbow in the eastern sky. We all stood at the doorway to admire it and I wished that I could stop time once again.
I have thought about the rainbow all evening and I picture it arcing across the sky and I realized that even a beautiful, vivid rainbow has a beginning and an end, a starting and a stopping. It is a moment in time that helps me remember that all things begin and end, the wonderful moments and also the difficult ones. No matter how hard we think things are, and that sometimes we can't see an end to them, they will always end and there will be something wonderful that will begin. Having babies is like that, hard and wonderful. I heard a man say once "my wife was in labor for 18 hours. I don't know about you but I wouldn't even want to do something I liked for 18 hours". When I think about the 9 times I labored, I don't remember much about the hard parts, but I do remember the sweet parts, the soft parts, and the baby smell parts. These are the moments that I have captured in my hearts journal. Today I will add a lovely time spend together with two daughters and grandchildren singing Beatles Songs with Jared and Ashley and Tim. It was a lovely rainbow day.