If you know me, then it’s no secret that I’ve been pining for Portland, my hometown, since the day we left it in August of 2005. The hope has always been that someday we would move “home.” It almost became reality a few years ago, but it was not to be. More recently, after my husband lost his job, it became a very real possibility again. I applied for and was accepted into the Psy.D. program at George Fox University, which always struck me as ironic because it was the school where I attended my freshman year of college. This was it. A compelling reason to move home. But, sadly, it is still not meant to be.
Instead, we’ll be leaving behind a home we love, and church family and friends that we adore, and an area that has become a “home.” It’s time to make a new home. In Kansas. (If you read that and cringed just a little bit, I totally understand.) I suppose, according to Dorothy, that there is no place like home, and Kansas was her home, after all.
Deductive reasoning should tell you that Kansas is nowhere near George Fox and that by moving to the actual midwest (I mean, who are we kidding? Chicago is really not “mid” anything.) I will not be able to attend the program that I got into. So it’s a double whammy. No Portland, no doctoral program. Allow me to be crude for a moment – It fucking sucks.
I’ve been waiting for a long time to figure out what I want to do with my life. Waiting for a long time for my chance to pursue a dream or a calling like my husband has for many years. Some days the waiting feels like forever.
****************
One thing you get used to as a Portlander is rain. It rains all. The. Time. But on the flip side, I’ve never seen more rainbows than when I lived in Oregon. Rainbows in the Bible are a sign of promise. Rainbows today are a symbol of love and uniqueness. A rainbow baby is a baby born after a miscarriage or stillbirth. Even on the worst day possible, I can’t help but smile if a rainbow appears in the sky. The light after a storm and a glimmer of hope in tumultuous darkness. I’m always searching the sky for this colorful symbol.
Yesterday, after a quick downpour of rain, the sun immediately peeked through the clouds and I rushed to the windows to see if a rainbow would appear. In very Illinoisian style, it didn’t. Of course it didn’t. And we’re not moving to Portland. Of course we’re not. But a few moments later, I walked into our bathroom and the sunlight coming through the (super awkward) glass tiles in the shower wall made a mirage of rainbows on the wall and the sink and the bathtub. They were small and faint, but they were there.
And maybe that’s what I’m looking for now. No, we don’t get to move home and that is truly devastating. There is no shining rainbow of brilliant colors in the sky. But there are a lot of little rainbows. They might be faint, and small, but they are there. And when all of those fragments are put together they might make a beautiful whole. So, I’ll keep searching the sky, of course, but I’ll also be looking for those glimpses of color and trying to remember that rainbows only appear where the storm and sunshine meet.
