Wrangler Dani

This year’s Easter was magical. Let me begin, as I often do, by telling you about the food: smoked carnitas tacos with all the fixings (including homemade beans and rice, queso, slaw!) a positively rapturous three-layer carrot cake, and homemade pate a choux. Of course, we also had a decadent Easter egg hunt which yielded dozens of eggs per excited child, with thrilled parents, friends and grandparents helping tiny hands hold way too many eggs, and so much happiness.

I made 4 liters of white sangria with peaches and brandy and ginger and citrus. I also belatedly realized I should have eaten something before sipping a glass while gossiping with my mom in the sunshine; and so ran off to find tortilla chips and salsa before my light head floated away entirely.

It was a perfect day – sunshiney and full of laughter and love, an open door to everyone to pull up a pastel paper plate and a seat, a welcome redemption after months of grey rain and long winter nights. Fitting that such a lovely afternoon came at a time when I’ve been giving thought to work and play, luck and blessing, hardship and hope. My friend has been going through a dark season lately and asked me recently what I thought about the goodness of God. Is it real? Is life meaningful, or are our days just strung together drips and drabs, the bits of juice we can squeeze out before we inevitably get a mouthful of pith or mold?

Perhaps I believe in the goodness of God and the meaning of life because I have lived through pain and now I am watching with joy as my kids rattle full plastic eggs, rejoicing to find pennies, tattoos and Tootsie Rolls. Would I believe in the goodness of God and the meaning of life if I was watching someone else’s children enjoy the unique fervor of a communal Easter Sunday, if the goodness I longed for had not come to pass?

I think I will say yes. I dare to believe that there is goodness when our pain tells us otherwise, when we worry that all we can ever pass on in the world is our dysfunction, our mistakes, the mistakes of others. Because the sweetness of orange juice, dripping down dimpled baby chins, is a good and unnecessary joy, an indulgence of wonder. Even if the baby was not mine, it would still be a good gift, a welcome sight for us weary travelers. Kids bring out the best in us, they remind us to lighten up, they are honest and uncomplicated. As the old saying goes, “Babies are proof that God is an optimist.”

It’s tempting to work for joy, to insist that my effort alone made things beautiful, that I am responsible for the well-being of the people around me, that I can make or break their days. It’s a prideful shame, a way of insisting that I am both the Most Important Person and the Biggest Screw-Up, a yo-yo of intoxicating, stomach-churning power. But I did not put the fresh smell of grass into spring days, I did not make grandparenthood a uniquely free and powerful happiness, I did not invent smoking pork shoulder until it caramelizes and pulls apart in succulent strands.

As the Psalmist said, “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.” Another version says, “I would have fainted, but…” This is serious, a confidence that is fought for and grappled with. I am not confident because life is all sweetness with no sour, or because I am powerful enough to ensure that everyone I love only has good times and cloudless Easters. I am confident because I’ve been given grace to tuck a warm April afternoon into my bank of memories, because God didn’t have to make laughter but I am so glad he did. Perhaps goodness is less of a big existential question and more of a small, slowly revealed meditation on small joys and imperfect people, how we hope even when it’s hard, how it’s actually not up to us after all, that Springtime and redemption both come, while we are yet waiting in the dark.