"I Don't Want To Miss Anymore Rainbows."

Did you see it?” “Did you see it?” Twice in quick succession he asked. The first time I didn’t realize over the roaring blasts of both hand dryers that he was talking to me. On a recent trip I had stopped at an interstate rest area. Now, drying my hands, I was startled out of my reverie of thoughts and slowed in my rush to get somewhere by a stranger at the adjacent dryer. “Did you see it?” My first thought was, “What? A wreck maybe. Stopping at the same rest area, we are traveling the same direction. But, I didn’t see a wreck.” Thinking this, I was answering, “No,” when he asked again, this time using the antecedent for “it.” “Did you see the rainbow?” I glanced over at him. His wrinkled face was glowing with a smile that seem to cast a halo-like glow on his full shock of white hair. For miles there had been nothing but lightening, thunder, and showers. As day broke, the dark clouds were evident. But, no I had seen no rainbow. I had missed it. He went on, “It was beautiful, beautiful. I’m seventy-eight years old. I don’t want to miss anymore rainbows. You know what I mean?” “Yes,” attempting to be polite, gregariously I agreed, “I know what you mean.” Walking back to my vehicle, I began to wonder at his unique wording, “I don’t want to miss ANYMORE rainbows.” Anymore? That could only mean that he had realize that he had missed other rainbows. The “seventy-eight years old” that prefaced the “anymore” was his way of saying, “I finally get it. Time is short. I don’t have many rainbows ahead of me, and I have missed far too many that I could have seen, if only I had taken the time and been interested enough.” I heard much in his statement; some, no doubt, was also an admission of regret—an admission we all could share. We get so busy. We are bogged down or spinning on the hamster wheel of activities. We are so enmeshed in doing, scurrying here and there. We are so absorbed in things from trouble to technology. We don’t even see them; we miss the rainbows God puts in our lives. The first rainbow ever God gave as symbol of promise after the destructive inundation of this earth. Though pirated for many other messages including a deviant one, the rainbow is yet a symbol of promise. I had missed my most recent rainbow in the hurrying logistics of a trip. More disturbingly, I had, no doubt, missed many other rainbows in my life, especially, recently. There are so many tragedies, losses, and disruptive things in the world added to personal crises and burdens and responsibilities that we miss seeing the rainbows. We see the lighting. We hear the thunder. We note the rolling dark clouds. We listen to the torrents of rain. But, we miss the rainbow. It wasn’t a matter of there not being a rainbow. The white-haired man had seen it. I had just missed it. You weren’t there and, no doubt, I have inadequately described it, but can you hear the aged man say, “I don’t want to miss anymore rainbows.”? I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll just declare it too. “I don’t want to miss anymore rainbows.” We each only have so many.

"I Don't Want To Miss Anymore Rainbows."

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