Sister Rainbow Brite

Making my way up the stairs at the club last night, reality punched me in the stomach.  Tears sprang to my eyes and utter fear gripped my heart.  How am I going to get through 18 months of not being able to just pick up the phone and talk to her?

I’d been going about my daily routine, putting off the reality that come November, Eden will be a sister missionary for her church.  No phones, no texts, no Skype – except for Christmas  and Mother’s Day.  I can’t breathe.

The ability to talk with her, and the miraculous boon of seeing her gorgeous face and brilliant smile on my computer screen as we laugh about the latest – well, I’m not willing to give that up!  Who’s in charge here anyway?  Oh that’s right.  She is.

This weekend, she’ll be Rainbow Brite for Halloween.  The alter-ego of her childhood is still there in her laugh, her outlook, her worldview.  She takes the gloom out of the world and replaces it with rainbows.

In the Joy Luck Club, a woman is asking her mother why she is so negative about her fiance.  The fiance lavishes the daughter with love and gifts, but the mother has nothing positive to say about him.  Finally, the mother says that she likes the fiance well enough, “but, to allow him to marry such a daughter!”  Eden is a ways off from marriage, but my protective instinct is on high alert.  I have visions of my Marine sister and I taking off to where Eden is located to track down any offenders – real or imagined!  In a matter of days, she’ll become Sister Olenslager.  I tuck a prayer under my pillow that the world will greet her with open hearts and minds, that she will be treated with kindness.

She has a gift to give which cannot be confined to the four walls of my computer screen, nor the boundless paradise she occupies in my heart.  There are grey and barren valleys in this world waiting for her message of hope.

Godspeed, Sister O!

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