My Reboot blog post discussed mental illness. As more than one member of my family has been dealing with mental illness, it’s been on my mind. But this past week I had to shift gears a bit, in order to prepare for a talk at my church. And as I finalized my notes, I realized my topic, Finding Hope in Difficult Times, really spoke to my concerns over mental illness, as well as other areas of struggle in my life. A couple of women told me before the retreat that they could not come and would I share notes? A couple of personal friends asked the same thing.
What follows is the beginning portion of my talk. I’ll share the rest in segments. Because there was a lot of interaction, I’ve had to make adjustments that I’ll notate as I share each segment. It is my hope and prayer that this talk, shared in written words instead of verbally, speaks to your heart!
Finding Hope During Difficult Times, originally presented on 9/26/2026
This is my third opportunity to bring a message to you ladies. That you have asked me back to speak is very meaningful to me, and I am thankful to the LWML leadership and for you ladies who have given up an entire Saturday to come here. The first message I gave in 2024 was about discovering God’s will/purpose for your life; last year’s message was about joy; today is about finding HOPE during difficult times. If you have attended the previous two retreats, you will hear faint echoes from those topics here, and that is intentional, because I believe these topics are interrelated to a degree.
Before I begin I want to share about something that happened to me yesterday. I usually sing in an Evensong choir on Friday nights. And I went to the service yesterday filled with a bit of trepidation over today…. You’ll hear more about why as we move through the day, but I went to the Evensong service with a lot of foreboding thoughts in my head.
I should explain the layout of the room (a renovated barn) where we meet. The choir sits/stands along the left-side wall, and as the service began I had my eyes closed in order to orient my mind on worship. The service always opens with the choir singing (sacred liturgical style, sung acapella), and as the first song wound down, I opened my eyes. Across the seated audience (chairs for maybe 50, to give you the approximate size), on the opposite side wall, was a rainbow! It was fully formed, filling the wall space (maybe 5 ft. square) in between two sets of vertical windows. It was such an unusual sight—a rainbow on a wall INSIDE a building! As the service progressed, my eyes were transfixed on the rainbow, as the colors deepened and became more vivid with each passing minute.
I nudged my fellow soprano and pointed to the rainbow. “Do you see that?” I inquired. “See what?” She whispered. “The rainbow!” I pointed again. “Oh, yea, uh-huh.” I didn’t understand that response…a rainbow inside of a building is not a common occurrence. I concluded that she didn’t actually see it, which made me wonder, was I the only one?
Now I know enough about rainbows and how they are formed. Light from the sun refracts, usually involving water such as rain, into the different wavelengths that are visible to the naked eye—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Yes the colors were all there and stunningly vibrant, slightly undulating and shimmering. There was a horizontal bank of windows above our heads along the choir-side of the building, so the sun was presumedly coming through those windows and projecting the rainbow on the wall. But the strange thing was that yesterday was a bright sunny day…no rain at any point. What caused the rainbow?
I expected the aberration to slowly fade or vanish with the shifting of the sun, but it did not; for nearly the entire service it remained bright and colorful. Finally, near the end of the service, the rainbow shifted to aurora borealis green and purple, then vanished altogether.
The effect this mystery had on me is difficult to put into words. I can only say that I felt giddy and I know without a shred of doubt that I had a wide silly grin on my face as I walked out the doors. God had given to me (and others perhaps, I don’t know) a sweet “I love you” gift! I went home relaxed and slept peacefully, without a care in the world. I woke up this morning with complete confidence (and dare I say it? Hope?) that whatever was going to happen today, during my talk and our time together, was well under God’s control. I had nothing to worry about.
