Today's a Great Day For All Americans

Today is a great day. I just watched the swearing in of President Obama, and it made me feel great. I'll admit it, I didn't vote for the guy. I like small government. But I hope today is a day when 40 million black Americans who might have formally felt marginalized - who might have formally felt like second-hand citizens - feel desired, wanted and NEEDED to make this country great as much as the demographic who founded this country.

I know how that feels to a much lessor extent. I'm a woman. And for most of my life, because of my buying into the beliefs of some others, I felt like women had a lessor role to play in the world. I felt like I didn't have the choices men had to take hold of my dreams and follow them. I felt like the dreams I could grab hold of were a much smaller subset of the dreams men had. It wasn't because of my parents, or even men in my life, since all of them have always told me the sky's the limit. Rather, it was because of some limiting religious culture that I had heard and believed. Praise God I'm free of that now. Primarily because of the men and women in my life who kept pushing me to grow outside the boundaries I thought women had.

I wonder if many black Americans have felt that way too. I wonder if they felt like they were in a box, with only a subset of the dreams that white Americans held. I hope that after today they don't feel that way anymore. I hope that if they were in that box, they've broken free from it. I hope they realize God's gift, and His MANDATE to share all they have with the world. I hope they feel like first class citizens in a country that relegated them to the back of the bus just 50 years ago.

So to women, minorities, and anyone else who feels limited - step forth! We need your light to shine now more than ever.