Rainbows...

I loved rainbows when I was a teenager, and shared this love with my best friend, Karen Esplin.  One morning about a month after my father died in 2011, I was driving to the Houston Temple with Madie and told her about my love for rainbows and a song that Karen and I would listen to called "I'll build you a rainbow".  It was about a boy who's mother was dying and she told him that once she was gone she would build him a rainbow so he would know she was still close and watching over him. Karen and I listened to this song over and over and cried our little teenage eyes out.
 The chorus went "I'll build you a rainbow, way up high above, send down the sunbeams all plum full of love, sprinkle down raindrops teardrops of joy, I'll be happy in heaven watching over my boy."

Well as soon as I finished telling Madie this story we turned the corner and there was this gigantic rainbow coming up from the little road we were driving on.  Amazed I started crying and told her "look Madie my dad built me a rainbow!"  She was the only child I had ever shared this part about me with and after she died I wondered if she would build me a rainbow.  We happen to live in a very wooded area and so it is very hard to see a rainbow where we live and is a rare occurrence for me to see one.  But there have been 3 times since her death that I have seen one, each time involving traveling.
The first rainbow was discovered the morning we were leaving Taylor in the hospital in Las Vegas to fly home and have Madie's funeral.   My friend Crystina Scott spotted it as we were driving to the hospital to tell Taylor and Bailee goodbye.  I would have probably missed it because I was in a daze most of the time at that point.  The rainbow was super wide but not tall cause it wasn't raining and went completely across the freeway.  

The second rainbow was when our airplane touched down in Houston returning from Taylor and Bailee's wedding in Arizona. I would have completely missed it but a little boy behind me said "Look there's a rainbow and I opened up my screen and sure enough this large rainbow stretched across the sky but was gone once we turned the corner on the runway. 
The third one was as I was driving into the Provo area  where Madie went to BYU from Salt Lake earlier in September.

 It was early evening the day I had arrived in Utah to spend time with Taylor, Bailee and friends and to have their open house in Utah.  The rainbow was very small when I first noticed it and as we got closer to Provo it grew larger and larger.  The really bizarre thing was we were en-route to a  concert at BYU by Audra McDonald, and her closing song she sang was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"
 I came across this picture on facebook yesterday,

The knoll is called Sugar Knoll

 that was captured this past weekend in the vicinity of the crash site,and decided to do some investigating to see how close it was to the actual location, and there it was visible from the crash site.

The Sugar Knoll is on the right side by the mountains that are in shadow.

 Coincidence, some might think bit I choose to see it as gift to help ease my grieving heart.
As often is the case in life it is in looking back that we see things line up in miraculous ways. I never realized all those years ago how rainbows would become a very personal witness to me of God's tender mercies to help me feel like he knew that I needed a little bit of encouragement and how poignant these lyrics would become for me personally .

This song was shared with me today and was perfect words for this post.   LOVE IT!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NJqUN9TClM


Madie, thanks for building me rainbows and letting me see them at very opportune moments, and as our prophet Thomas S. Monson has stated, there are no coincidences in life..