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It’s a funny part of growing up, actually… Accepting that things that are better for you, healthier—they can still be painful. That the worst, most shameful
day of my life to date would in turn become the most defining.
“That God that my mom thinks she serves—he’s so much smaller than who I think the real one is. The real one—to me, he’s everywhere, in everything. And sure, maybe he speaks through the Bible. But also maybe he speaks through Narnia, and
Harry Potter despite J. K. Rowling lately, and the trees, and science, and the stars, and black holes and the ocean and the way the sky looks sometimes, and you can feel it in your chest.”
“And I don’t think they’re not letting your mom into heaven because she didn’t believe in the God that modern Christianity claims to represent. I think he’s good.” I shrug. “And I think he loves everyone, and he wants everyone to be okay, and I think almost everyone who is, like, earnestly seeking God—people aren’t seeking that out of ego; they’re looking for the meaning of life and they’re looking beyond themselves for it—and, I mean, I don’t know anything, except that I think God is the kind of guy who when someone dies, he’ll sit there and sift through every heartfelt thought, every drunken
...more
for a hint of a confession that you believe in him.”
“Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” I stare up at the big arch, which is my favorite part, I think. “Even though it’s broken?”
Everything in this town, the Ritz Carlton included, seems to sport a droopy loveliness, like the whole city is a Southern belle fainting in the hot Louisiana sun. The city smells of a time we’d all rather be from, ripe with some sort of old magic, thick with a formidable lust and heavy with a fog of dreams both realized and lived but also lost—and
And I think to myself, wouldn’t it be so lovely if we viewed ourselves through the same lens as the people who love us?
