Not long ago the employees of the crisis line where I had worked for many years were told that the service would need to close because there wasn’t sufficient funding to keep it operational. This decision had been made by the management personnel of the nonprofit organization of which the crisis line was a part after months of effort had gone into trying to obtain funding from many sources. I felt bad for the other counselors and myself that we would be losing our employment, but I felt worse for the many people who would no longer have this helpful resource available to them.
When I walked to my car after completing my last shift, I saw a beautiful rainbow. Rainbows are special because they are pretty and we never know when one will appear or how long it will last. They are unexpected gifts. Although I’d had time to accept the fact that the service I had cared about so much was ending, I was still feeling sad about it. Seeing that rainbow not only raised my spirits but made me think of what it symbolized for me: an unexpected, lovely surprise. Two days later I was asked by an administrator of the organization of which the crisis line was a part if I would be interested in continuing to do crisis line counseling by answering calls for some county crisis lines. Some funding had come through to continue some but not all of the services we had been offering, making this position possible. I immediately said yes.
I have written about synchronicities in other posts and about how we can learn from them and be given messages from our inner voice through them. Synchronicities are meaningful, acausal occurrences. The rainbow didn’t cause the new crisis line job to become available, and the job didn’t cause the rainbow to occur. And yet seeing that rainbow on the last day of my crisis line job caused me to wonder if something positive might happen; it made me feel hopeful. And sure enough something special and unexpected—just as a rainbow is special and unexpected—happened. And I continue to be a crisis line counselor doing work I care about deeply.