As I was driving up to see our oldest play in a fall baseball game today, I had to notice the trees alongside the interstate.  The different tints of greens, softly fading to lighter shades, with hints of yellow and even some burnt red here and there.  This season…fall…is the one we notice the most.  But it is the one that made sense for me today.  I was reminded about how we change, even though we are really the same.  I know that might be tough to follow, but give it a try.  Every year, the leaves on those same trees change colors and then lose their leaves and then they grow again.  That is us.  We are the same people inside as we are rooted by those beliefs and values that define our very essence and soul.  But we still change.  I am the same person I have always been from the very beginning, but I am so much more now.  It may but a subtle change where our leaves really don’t change too much for others to notice, but they do.  Then, there are those that lose their pigment, fall to the ground, and then they sprout again in a few months.  Each year, we get taller and become more full of the life inside of us as we are nourished by the environment that surrounds us.  We are tough when the winter winds howl and the cold takes us down to our bare skin, but we hold firm.  We might bend, but we do not break.  I told someone recently that, “No matter where we go or who we become, I will never forget who helped me get there.”   We may have changed in the process, but we are who we know each other to be and I saw it in her eyes this weekend.  The seasons come and go and they are different each time they do.  But we go through that process, getting better and becoming stronger through each one.  Like the tree, we grow.  We live.  We become.  Thank you.

Michelle Homme 2012 ©