I have no recollection of any fear of rain storms. I love listening to the patter of precipitation on my window at night, a gentle tat-tatting of white noise as I drift off to sleep. Winters in California bring only rain and wind; Idaho winters start with rain, become hail and sleet, then evolve into furious blowing snow, silent ice and a late, gradual, slowly dripping thaw. But I've already written about snow--tonight I write about green California winters.
There are rolling hills just inland off the coast of California. These hills turn a gentle green in the winter, as heavy rainfall and sunny days interspersed throughout coax a soft verdant carpeting on the hills near my childhood home. In late summer these hills turn golden brown, as grasses ripen and constant sun bleaches out the green, but I always picture these hills in their spring splendor.
My first visit back home after a semester in Idaho, all I could do was point out the car window and say, "Green!" over and over. Green is the most relaxing to the eye, and the human eye can detect more shades of green than any other color in the visible spectrum. (Hence why night vision goggles are typically that funky green color.) Countries that face a "regular" winter only have endless fields of white, which often becomes fields of grey and brown. Even evergreen trees are dressed in frosty coats for most of the frozen season.
Sometimes the California rain storms also come with lots of wind, blowing down huge tree branches, littering the roadways with leafy debris. Often the wind storms knock out power lines, and the rains can cause flooding and land slides. But I never feared the weather as a child.
I remember my father led me and my sister to my bedroom window one evening during a thunderstorm. The house shook with each resounding boom of thunder, but then my father pulled a classic trick out of the parental handbag: he distracted us. Instead of indulging any sign of fear, he pointed out amazing forks of lightning between the claps of thunder. He knelt down next to us, pointed out the window and said, "Oh, wow, isn't that neat? That's so cool, isn't it?" My father genuinely admires nature and science, and his enthusiasm was easy to catch. Since then I have never feared thunderstorms, and I want to do the same thing with my own children.
If it happened to storm in the daytime, my family would always have an eye out for sunshine peeking through the deep grey clouds: We were rainbow watchers! There is a somewhat famous YouTube video online, involving a drunk man marveling at a double rainbow. Trust me, they really are that cool. It was in my own backyard where I learned that the position of the sun at the time of a rainstorm could affect the shape of a rainbow. The higher up the sun was in the sky, the flatter and longer a rainbow; the lower to the horizon, the more arched and compact the rainbow.
My sister and I chased rainbows on a number of occasions. Sometimes we would already be out driving on some errand, other times we would hop in the car and just go. Most of the time the rainbow would fade as clouds would cover up the sun again, before we could reach the rainbow. But one time we actually managed to come out on the other side of one! We didn't notice until all of a sudden the rainbow was behind us, not in front anymore. I think that inattention on our part is what made us miss the pot of gold... It was still a fun little adventure, as we often ended up in unfamiliar neighborhoods and had to spend some time navigating our way back home.
It's too bad gay people have turned something so beautiful into a symbol of corrupt thinking. Sorry, but even if you are born with the wrong body parts or some homosexual tendencies, it is still your choice to be straight. There are hormone supplements and therapy to correct those problems, and--most importantly--the Atonement to help heal the hurt of this kind of trial. We are all born with imperfections, and all of them can be overcome, if we simply choose to do something about it.
God does allow bad things to happen to us, He allows us to be born with missing limbs, ADHD brains or homosexual desires, all so we can learn to rely on Him and develop into better beings. And of course, it is because of agency that this is possible. This also means we can hurt one another, if we choose not to be better people in this life. Injuries from self-centered, misguided fellow beings can also be healed through Christ's atonement. I just wish more gay people heard messages like mine here. Hopefully they'll get a chance someday.
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