The rainbow

This evening I was driving Ty to youth night at church. I'm still getting the hang of getting to places from our townhouse. There are always at least three or four ways to get anywhere and I have to think about what I'm doing and where I'm going. This is especially challenging with my scrambled egg brain. What does that have to do with anything? I was sitting at a traffic light that I may or may not have been at if I was thinking clearly and I watched a rainbow develop before my eyes. 

I was at a traffic light heading east. It had been storming most of the afternoon and the storm was heading out to sea. The sky was still apocalyptic to the east as the storm blew out. I was staring off into the sky and I thought, "Wow, that almost looks like a shadow of a rainbow." As I kept looking, in a matter of seconds, it got brighter and brighter. Then I saw a faint second rainbow above the now vivid first one. A double rainbow. 

I told Ty to look at the rainbow, and then the double rainbow. He oohed and ahhed briefly and then he said the rainbow was from Eli. 

TIMEOUT. I know a few parents of deceased children who love seeing rainbows, who feel connected to their child when they see one, who attribute rainbows to their child's doing. And you know what? They can totally do that. They can believe that. It's not crazy. But I'm really cynical in my own life and I can't believe Eli makes rainbows for me. Believe me, I would love to believe that. But I currently don't. 

TIME IN.

Ty said Eli made the rainbow. I asked him if he believed that. He said yes. Then he said he knew it because it was a double rainbow and Eli was a one-upper, so he would have made an extra special rainbow. I was already crying and then I was laughing. He had a point. Eli was a one-upper for sure, especially with Ty. 

I dropped Ty off at church and got in my friend's van to ride to another friend's house around the corner. I relayed the story to my friend about Ty attributing the double rainbow to Eli because he was a one-upper. Then I told her that I just didn't believe it. How many people in Jacksonville have lost a loved one and are thanking their own deceased person for the very same rainbow? I just can't get there.

But as I'm explaining why I don't believe this, the rainbow starts getting BRIGHTER and FATTER. You could see every color of ROYGBIV. And then there was an extra layer under the indigo/violet area of MORE indigo and violet. It was practically glowing. 

I am a lifelong Floridian. We have intense storms and beautiful rainbows. I have seen hundreds of rainbows in my life. I've never seen anything close to the rainbow I saw today. It was almost as though the more I denied the rainbow being from Eli, the brighter and more intense the rainbow became. 

I still don't really think it was Eli. But it was beautiful and spiritual. I'm glad I was out of the house to see it.