One of the things I love about having to drive to and from the various appointments and activities with my girls is the view outside my car window. In some of the areas we pass through, we crest slow-rising hills and the scenery stretches out in various hues of greens adorning the grasses and trees in the surrounding meadows, the cornfields, and the trees spanning the shores of the wide rivers. As well, the sky shimmers with shades and layers of blues overhead. Nature’s hues of beauty often are intoxicating, exhilarating, even, and it almost always inspires my mind to travel along paths of creativity, entertaining ideas both new and dormant.
Recently, as I considered the intricate designs of the Creator throughout the natural world my girls and I drive through each day, my thoughts latched onto the myriad ways the hues and subtleties of color and the designs of nature mirror at least a little bit the layers and subtleties of the personalities and diverse but intertwined interests within each of my teenagers. Like the creation that surrounds me, I see the Creator’s hand upon them, in their interests and the ways they look at and reflect the world around them.
For me, the layers of greens across the vastness of fields, meadows, trees, and farms resemble the layers each of us has within us. Indeed I see this at play daily in my own life as well as in my teenagers. But, it goes even deeper than what I see in them; it has as much to do with what others perceive. In the same way that each of us discerns the world around us through our own experiences, even the beauty and the colors of the natural world that surrounds us, so, too, we each experience other people and who they are in distinctly different ways. More often than not I have wondered what colors look like through the eyes of someone else. Do they see that patch of blue sky in the same way as me? Does it evoke a sense of coolness or does it seem to shimmer for them? Does it appear lighter or darker to someone else? The same goes with the subtleties of the greens that shift and catch the sun’s rays differently in the summer breeze, one moment a deeper, darker hue, the next a lighter color, airier in both its shade and its brilliance.
So, too, I believe, are the ways we appear to the world—those who love us and know us well and those who are seeing us, meeting us, for the first time. Over the course of their lives, I have marveled at the impressions my girls make on others. This has been true especially for the ones who have assisted us on their neurodivergent journeys. When my girls first meet a new therapist or new person, they are far more guarded, even reticent than they are after they’ve come to know and trust a new person. To make use of a well-worn cliche, they tend to let the true colors of their personality shine through when they are comfortable with the people in their lives.
Beyond this aspect, however, is the richness and complexity of who these two remarkable young women are and the beauty they add to the world as they move through it. Truly the shifting hues of their personalities paint the world with a much-needed, too-often lacking brilliance like the breathtaking but subtle shades of nature. They are whispers of truth and dazzling displays of kindness. They are glimmers of goodness and tendrils of empathy. Like the swaying grasses and the sighing of the leaves in the gentle breeze, these two young women are reminders of hope and joy and wonder, displayed in the things that inspire joy and delight within them and in the essence of what makes them who they are.
Within them, like all of us, are intricacies. They explore the world through their unique interests, discovering and sharing perspectives that amplify and expand the way others think about things; at least that’s been my experience. In other words, they are not all one thing and nothing else. Instead, they are layers and hues and subtleties of colors, of creativity, of God’s handiwork. Reminders that each of us is a masterpiece created in God’s image and reflections of each of our rich potential. Just like the natural wonder and beauty of the landscape that invites me to consider and wander down the paths of creativity within my mind.