First: Jesus loves you. Even if he is the only man who does at the moment.

Two: your sexuality and your religion are not mutually exclusive and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Three: someday you will be able to sit in a church and not worry about the whispers, or the looks, or the convenient way the pastor’s sermon seems to shift to sins of the flesh. And you will learn to let go, of the guilt they convinced you to carry for them and all the times you thought you didn’t deserve to be here.

Four: the old Bible story goes that god created the rainbow as a promise not to flood the world again. As a reminder that there is always good left in the world. So I guess that makes us the covenant. I guess that makes us a reminder of all that is good. The ability to love, to choose to love amid all the hate, despite all the risks and the danger, we choose to love anyway. Every time.

Five: God is love

Six: Forgiveness is a luxury we will receive again and again and again, but being yourself is something you never need to ask forgiveness for. God knows who you are and loves you anyway.

Seven: hold your breath, hear that heart firmly beating in the cathedral of your chest, feel the wind gently caressing your skin, and ask yourself how something this complex, this magnificent, this aware could be anything less than beautiful. You my dear are fearfully and wonderfully made and there are no exceptions. You were made to be EXACTLY the person you are today and every person you will become tomorrow. You are a work in progress and a reminder that even perfection can get better. And that perhaps perfection isn’t what you always thought it was.

Eight: you are more that what you always thought you were. What they told you you were.

Nine: sometimes bad things happen to good people, sometimes good things happen to bad people, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between good and bad. And this earth is often a cold and merciless landscape, but while we are here, in this place, why not choose love? Why not choose to love one another, to accept people, all people for who we are, and who we were made to be.

And Finally, 10: for my lesbian sisters, never forget that god loves you, even if at the moment she is the only woman who does.