Fitting

I went to church by myself yesterday.
I am enjoying my new church; it is a strange feeling as I can’t remember a time when I liked church as much as I am right now.
But it was the holiday, and I was there alone. I don’t think I’ve ever gone to church on Easter alone before; in college my church was full of friends and in the years since I’ve either not attended church on Easter or I’ve gone with friends. This was a first.

As I was getting ready to go, my roommate came home. She’d just met her boyfriend’s parents and she walked in with tears in her eyes. My immediate response was to find out who I needed to kill/shun/threaten. She smiled and said, “No one. I just really, really miss my family today.”

I realized that I did too.

It was with this thought that I went to church and took a pew toward the back. Two pews in front of me sat a family: a daughter about my age and her parents. Half-way through the service she smiled at her father and put her arm around her mother to hold his shoulder. He smiled and did the same and they sat there, the three of them together, arms holding each other into this family. It was sincere and shockingly intimate. I couldn’t stop looking at them and could feel this sadness simmering inside me, bringing tears to my eyes. I snuck a photo of them because I knew I’d want to write about it later.

Easter is about redemption, about defeat over darkness, about good news fulfilled. In the midst of a suffocating sense of loss there came hope and life, in the midst of seeming abandonment lay love never before seen. It is fitting it is celebrated in spring; life lives again personified.

I left church with the intense belief that I am loved beyond reason but the sincere desire to share in it with someone. I went home to an empty house, sat on my deck and spent my day in virtual silence, save for the birds. I could hear life as it kept on living.