breathtaking

The Fall Season here in Utah is just spectacular! There are so many vibrant colors as the trees are changing and getting ready for winter. The yellows, reds, burgundies, greens, oranges and various pinks had me gasping today!

I was thinking today about how thankful I am that there are so many colors cascading across the hills and mountains of my home state. What a shame it would be if Red decided that everything needed to be Red, and if not, it was not allowed to be on the mountain. Or if Yellow said, “If you aren’t a shade of Yellow, you don’t matter and you should do everything you can to change your color to Yellow if you want to be on this hill”.

But instead, these colors work together, vibrantly expressing themselves with incredible boldness and unity. And it’s breathtaking!

What if humans had the capability to do that, too?

Imagine how beautiful it would be if everyone was accepted for who they are - if their religion, their sexual orientation, their race, their skin or hair color, their political orientation…none if it mattered. Everyone was just allowed to vibrantly express themselves with incredible boldness and unity. Oh, what a world that would be! The trees tell me so.

A girl can dream.

From this day forward, this girl is going to do all she can to make sure that the people around her feel freedom to believe, be, express themselves and love others however they see fit in my presence. Because the way I see the world now is brighter, bolder and way more colorful than it used to be.

Coming out of a high control religious system of beliefs has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. If you weren’t our color, you weren’t accepted on our mountain. Your purples and pinks were far too much for us to accept. Our color was the only color that was right. Our color was the only color that mattered. And if you weren’t our color, we would send people to your area to teach you how to be our color so you could be on our mountain. Other colors were a threat. Other colors were wrong. Other colors were being deceived into believing their colors were beautiful, but we all knew they really weren’t. Poor things needed us to turn them our color!

The most challenging thing was trying to figure out how to keep my faith but release the dogma and the control my theology demanded. I have finally found the sweet spot, but it’s taken a lot of time. You can still have vibrant faith and not be religious. It’s incredible.

We are all created to express ourselves uniquely. When we allow the people we love in our lives to express themselves authentically, we invite them to be their truest self in our presence. And nothing says “I love you” like someone loving you right where you are, for who you are, no matter what “color” you are. Wouldn’t it be breathtaking?

Every journey is worthy of honor.