Rainbow on a rough day

Today was one of many rough days.
I was exhausted from lack of sleep caused by kids/insomnia/the neighbor's storage door banging against the railing all night. Our upstairs neighbors are so loud. They whoop, holler, yell at each other, stomp, romp, wrestle... Sometimes I wonder if they're trying to burst a hole in our ceiling. When the toilets flush, the water rushing through the pipes is so loud. Their music is loud, their voices are loud, they vacuum late at night.

I'm frustrated.

But apparently so are the people beneath us. Ammon and Quin were doing their usual galloping and hollering after dinner. At the old house they would run loops through the downstairs area until they were exhausted. After a few minutes of that today, the upstairs neighbors used a broom (or something like it) to tap on their ceiling and signal us to quiet down. I was so embarrassed, but the feeling of hopelessness in the pit of my stomach nearly choked me.

We're trapped.

It's like living in the middle of a pile of sardine cans. Surrounded by neighbors on every side, no way out. This is the only place we can afford and we're still spending more than 30% of our income on rent alone. My new dream for the future is to buy some land out of town and put a manufactured house on it. I want to get AWAY from other people that I don't choose to have living near/on top of me. But there's no way we can afford land or a house anytime soon. We're stuck here.

I carried that feeling of despair as I picked up some hardware at Bimart. Maybe we need to move somewhere cheaper to live. Idaho? New Mexico? (no, there's scorpions there, bleh). 
When I got home I fixed the bookshelf that the kids had trashed. I was nervous as I hammered the thin nails into the back to secure it to the frame. Would my grumpy neighbors be mad at me for fixing a bookshelf? How am I supposed to actually live if we can't make a sound?!

I was excited to get the new cube organizer put together (with the vain hope of organizing the toys in the kids' closet) but I felt too depressed. I practiced the piano for a bit and then felt like I should stop what I was doing. I wanted to continue to the next page, but felt I should stop. I almost didn't listen to the prompting, but then I decided I should get out a Chopin nocturne and give it a try. As I neared the music bookshelf, I glanced through the glass of the patio door and was startled to see a vibrant rainbow at the end of the field in front of me. It stretched all the way across the sky to the beautiful Salem hills. The feeling that came over me was "you are right where you need to be."

I went outside and chased the rainbow to the end of the side walk. I watched it fade as I listed to other families excitedly talk about the rainbow. I had the feeling that this rainbow was here for me. To me it was a sign that Heavenly Father knows I'm going through a hard time. The rainbow was a reminder that His promises and covenants are sure. Right now the work I have to do from Him is to be a stay at home mom and take care of 3 of His precious children. Right now I have to do it in a second story apartment with noisy upstairs neighbors and grouchy downstairs ones. We're blessed to have two families nearby that are fun to play with and who have been so kind to us. We're blessed to have family on both sides (of the veil and our marriage!) near, watching over us. We have the atonement and our covenants to give us promise of better things.