Reminders of Promise

God once spoke the clearest word to me.  It was a defining moment.  It was permission.  It was direction.  It was promise of hope, of better days.

That word was ADOPTION.

When I was told I had type 1 diabetes nine years ago, I was elated and crushed, simultaneously.  I had been sick for a year and a half.  Diabetes stole.  It mocked.  It taunted.  It confused.  It teased.

I was emaciated, depressed, and hopeless.

While curled up on a hospital bed, barely listening to a diabetes nurse educator talk to me about counting carbohydrates and injecting insulin, I was just me:  broken and sick.  My tiny frame was covered by an oversized hospital gown.  I was covered in wires and tubes and bruises and anger.

But when the conversation turned to family-building, when the nurse asked me if I planned on being a mom, everything changed.

As she went on to talk about diabetes and pregnancy, a word popped into my mind.  A word that changed the trajectory of my life.

God spoke.

I listened.

As I spend this month thinking about my disease and its mysteries and intricacies and tricks, as I think about how far I've come, as I think about the surprising gifts my disease has given me, I notice glimpses of color.  Quiet reminders of how God has used my diagnosis to bless me, change me, teach me.

It's the veggies left on a highchair tray.

It's the ballerina twin-size sheets on top of the laundry heap.

It's the beads in my girls' hair.

It's the scraps of construction paper strewn about, a project half-completed, and abandoned, all in the name of creativity and childhood adventures.  

Reminders of how God sent a rainbow after the rain.  A promise.  The flood was bad.  Devastating. Seemingly endless.  But the rainbow came---gloriously, brightly.

Where is your rainbow today, Sugars?  Where has God placed color to remind you that He's there?