You always want what you can’t have

I spend too much time looking at the past, and I really forget how good I have it.

Today was perfect. I slept in till 11:30, then sat and drank black coffee with an old friend for maybe an hour. (There’s nothing like a friend around whom you can look your absolute worst and yet not feel ugly.) I spent another hour on the phone with my best friend, sitting on the back deck while my cat played in the yard. I didn’t brush my teeth until 2:30 and it was GLORIOUS.

It reminded me of probably my favorite Easter to date — in 2002, when my roommate Paula and I went to church together in the morning, then cooked for a handful of our friends who hadn’t gone home for Easter. That was one of the most laid-back days when I was able to appreciate grace and good friends.

At some point in the past several years, I’ve developed an appreciation for diversity that I had never realized I lacked. Like that day in 2002, last night and today were filled with people … mostly people who aren’t like me in a lot of ways. And it’s … I don’t know, fulfilling somehow.

Heather and I were talking earlier about faith, and ways that we’ve both changed since college. I told her that faith (and thereby life) is much messier than I ever thought, but also so much more beautiful.

It’s just been one of those days where your emotions hover just below the surface, threatening to break through. I was on the verge of tears several times during church tonight … and I kept thinking about how poker, beer and friends (many that I barely know) somehow don’t seem like Easter … but how, at the same time, friendships somehow have a redemptive quality.

“No need to ask where other roads might have led, since they led elsewhere; for nowhere but this here and now is my true destination.” –Ruth Bidgood