Rainbows

September 2nd is my wedding anniversary.  My husband and I have been married for 21 years now.  It is also a bittersweet day, because it was my oldest son's birthday.  We had decided to celebrate it by going away together.  We were going camping in the mountains, where no one could reach us--off the grid.  I had this feeling that God had something special planned for us, but we had little time to plan.

Consequently, everything seemed to be conspiring against us.  The more plans we made to get away, the more stressful everything became. We had stress from work, problems with the boys, and I was in tons of pain.  It was like we couldn't get away.  Finally, everything came together for us to leave, about two hours later than we had planned on Friday night.

We headed north to Denver, because Paul needed to drop some materials by a business.  We were supposed to be there before 7, because the business was closing then.  We got lost. Traffic was horrible.  We made it about 10 minutes before 7, and the business had already closed.  So we had to wait for the owner to show up.  Finally, we got to eat some dinner after that, and headed west into the mountains.

The place we had planned to go camping was full. It was dark, and we weren't sure where we were going.  So we took off in another direction, and to make a long story short, ended up sleeping in the car at the top of a mountain pass--cold, noisy and in pain from my fibromyalgia.

We slept for about 4 hours, then came down the mountain and headed toward Leadville, which was about an hour away.  We asked around for a place to camp and were told that there were a lot of places up past Turquoise Lake on Hagerman Pass.  We drove up for over an hour.  Everything was either taken or not what we were looking for.  Then we found it, the perfect campsite.  It had a view of the valley and the lake.  It was secluded and roomy.  There was no one around at all, except the few off roaders like us going over the pass.  We stopped, ate lunch, and set up the tent just in time for a huge rainstorm.

So, we crawled up into the tent, and miracle of miracles, we both fell asleep.  Now, you may think--well of course you fell asleep!  But the thing is, I NEVER NAP!  I just can't --not that I don't want to, my fibro doesn't let me sleep like normal people. I think the last time I took a nap before this was about 7 years before when my son was so sick and we were by his bedside day and night.   We feel asleep, and woke up a couple hours later.  It just felt so good.  So, we went for a small walk where we saw the most AMAZING rainbow I have ever seen in my life.  A full rainbow--we could see both sides of it from where we looked over the valley.  It was so bright that the trees in the valley below looked like they were on fire with the colors!  I tried to take a picture, but of course I couldn't capture what it looked like.  We knew then.  This is what God had planned for us.  We spent the next couple days just relaxing and talking to each other and to God.  It was so beautiful.  He just wanted to show us how much He loves us.  He gave us this chance to recharge and renew.

I just wanted to share this special time with you.  I know that sometimes God just does things for us because He loves us.  That is what this was, a peek into the Father's heart for his children.