All it takes is a little rainbow

As I drove home this morning after dropping Bear off at her school (running late as usual), I saw the end of a rainbow to the south, just beyond a hill.  It was just the tail end, there was no arch visible from my perspective.  I smiled.  Rainbows are unexpected in January.  I think of them as a Spring or Summer occurrence.   Well, it is Spring-like with out daffodils and tulips and hyacinths peeking through the ground here in the Southeastern US, but that's not the point.  We could, in theory, get a snow storm tomorrow.  Because it's winter.  But I digress...

I continued toward home, and the other end of the rainbow was visible slightly north, not very far from our neighborhood.  The sky was dark and ominous in between the two ends, yet the colors I saw were pretty vibrant and made me smile.  Rainbows remind me of hope.  God gave a promise of hope to Noah, and after Noah's obedience the rainbow shone across the sky.  Noah would have missed it had he disobeyed and failed to build the ark. (In addition to what have been his obvious demise.)

At that point I was in a great mood by the time I got back to the house.  My mental list of things to tackle was ceasing to overwhelm me, my determination was growing.  About an hour later, it was time to take Buddy to his preschool.  I pressed the button on the remote in the garage for the opener... grind.... scrape... grind.... the door didn't budge, the chain did not even look like it was moving.   The house is 18-ish years old, and the garage door opener is original.  We had the springs and cables professionally replaced after we moved in.  Sigh.  Had we wasted our money?  Irrelevant right now, as I pondered how to get the SUV out of the garage.  I contemplated pulling it forward and trying to back it out of the other side, but the risk of hitting my husband's motorcycle or worse, the wall between the two garage doors, was not appealing.  (I do think it was possible.)  I looked at the manual release.  Some idiot had tied it out of reach.  (I later realized I was calling my husband an idiot on the phone when I vented to him. Oops.)  So I grabbed the step ladder and a bamboo skewer, and used the skewer to loosen the knot.  It worked.  Opening the door was still tricky, that thing is HEAVY... but I got it open enough to back out.  Which I did.  (All the while my 3 year old thought it was an adventure.  "Mommy, be careful on the ladder!") After backing into the driveway, I closed the beastly door (it kind of slammed in spite of my efforts to control it).  Buddy was only about 30 minutes late to school, no biggie...
So, we'll be calling the garage door service to come back out and figure out what happened... in the meantime, I get to park in the driveway.  In the rain.

It's easy to let a little thing like this ruin my day. Especially considering the house seems to be full of things that keep wearing out or breaking, not to mention the relatively minor damage caused by a natural disaster followed by the frustration over the poor workmanship in the repair process. (That's another story, don't ask.)

But this morning there was a rainbow.  A glimmer of Spring in the bleak midwinter. (The rainbow has disappeared and there's a nice drizzle falling outside now.) So my big girl panties have been pulled on, and I am tackling little projects one at a time, taking care of what I can, thanking God for my many blessings (including my home and the challenges it thrusts at us), and making it a good day.