If faith is a journey, Reverend Caroline Morison has taken the scene route—one with a few unexpected detours, a military escort, and a very well-placed tube of mascara.

Long before she was among the first openly enlisted transgender soldiers in the U.S. Army National Guard, Caroline was an “Army brat” raised on duty, discipline, and a globe-spanning childhood. She grew up with a calling to both serve and care. So, Morrison joined the Army’s Chaplain Corps straight out of high school. While most of us were still figuring out how to microwave ramen without starting a fire, Caroline was deploying, serving, and wrestling with a God she hadn’t met yet.

“I wasn’t exactly mature enough to be on my own,” she laughed, recounting her early days in active duty. “Let’s just say I was sewing some wild oats.”

Those oats eventually sprouted into a life lived at the intersection of faiths. As a Religious Affairs Specialist, Caroline ensured the freedom of religious expression for every soldier, whether they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, or simply unsure. In those quiet moments of service, her theology began to shift. “God is where God is sought,” she told me. “It doesn’t have to be Christian. It’s where anyone is asking questions. That’s where God is.”

But Caroline’s questions of self didn’t begin in a pew or a deployment tent. They started in a dictionary.

“Before YouTube, there was the dictionary,” she joked. It was in those pages, somewhere between tranquilize and transubstantiation, that she found the word transgender. “It scared the daylights out of me,” she said. “I was Southern Baptist at the time. That word wasn’t okay. But it was me.”

Cue the mascara.

Wearing it got her in trouble. Keeping it hidden almost destroyed her. “I spent a week in the psych ward at the VA hospital after trying to end my life,” she shared, her voice steady. “They found my clothes. Called me Corporal Klinger. My dad even got a call from my first sergeant.” Yet, by some miracle–or perhaps grace–none of it showed up in her discharge paperwork. Which meant she could come back.

And she did.

In 2016, as President Obama lifted the ban on transgender military service, Caroline was already deep in seminary, falling in love with a God who didn’t wasn’t a punishing or judgmental deity. She came out in 2017; sadly, a month after coming out, President Trump tweeted his first ban. “It was a lot of everything,” she sighed. Still, Caroline persisted. She was among the first openly enlisted trans soldiers to navigate a military system, one with no roadmaps and little understanding. There was a heartbreaking moment during a session with her fellow chaplains. “All of us got together for a training, and I listened to [them] talk about what they could and couldn’t do,” she reflected. “What their denominations wouldn’t allow them to do and would allow them to do for transgender people.” It hurt. Deeply.

But she reminded me, “Can’t say that everyone is created in the image of God if I’m not willing to look for the image of God in everyone.”

Still, one of the most poignant moments in her journey came not in combat boots but in heels.

At an annual St. Barbara’s Day military banquet, with grog flowing and medals gleaming, she spotted Kansas State Representative Pat Proctor, the man who had recently voted to override the governor’s veto of the so-called Women’s Bill of Rights, a piece of legislation that stripped trans people of legal protections.

But Caroline gave him her hand instead of giving him the cold shoulder.

“We’re Iraq veterans,” she noted. Realizing she had an opportunity to show him someone beyond the tropes, she wanted to show him a trans veteran who served with distinction. She walked up confidently and shook his hand. “I just did my best to actually speak…I knew I had a very limited time to actually say something that meant anything.” Caroline didn’t know until later, but her wife snapped a photo of that moment.

For someone who has stood at pulpits and podiums, heard the worst from chaplains, and preached the best from God, it was a moment of radical grace.

I asked Caroline what message she wanted to share on today’s Trans Day of Visibility. Her response is soulful and inspiring. “It’s not a closet–it’s a chrysalis,” she says without missing a beat. “They try to make it a closet, but no. We grow, we change, we become new beings. And once we break free, there’s no putting us back.”

These days, Rev. Morrison is a hospice chaplain, preacher, and theologian who professes a more liberating vision of a God who holds multitudes—genders and transitions. She is also finishing a book on transgender liberation theology. And she’s still showing up for every trans person who hasn’t yet stepped out of their chrysalis.

Because Caroline Morrison isn’t just visible; she’s radiant. And we should follow suit. The bravest thing we can do is show up in our complicated, mascara-wearing truth.

And let the world see us shimmer.