do you love bridges?

My children are fond of asking me about their own interests.

Do you love bridges, Mom? Do you love them?

Which kind of bridge is your favorite?

Do you love a suspension bridge? What’s your favorite bridge to go on? What’s your favorite bridge we saw?

Do you love pink? Do you love sparkles?

Don’t you just love it? Isn’t it the most beautiful? Don’t you wish you had that pink dress?

And I find different ways to answer. I think you love it even more than I do! I love hearing about what you love!

And I think, my actual favorite is the way you say “fravorite,”

and I think, my actual delight is the way your cheeks dimple when you grin this way,

and I think, my actual joy is that you are bursting with the most joy of anyone I’ve ever known.

But the truth is, I cannot encounter a bridge without thinking of you;

and the truth is, in a sea of colors, pink leaps out at me;

and I think the truth is,

I love what you love,

I love what you love because you love it,

I love what you love because you are my child,

I love what you love because I love you.

***

For years, whenever I loved anything, I assumed it was idolatry. To love something at all, to enjoy it very much, made it inherently a sin. I repented ten thousand times of my joy and I scraped interests off of myself like barnacles.

***

It crashed back into me, this mentality, in hearing a pastor recently preach about the new year. In urging listeners to let go of the things they loved, because if they loved them more than God—quantified, as ever, by time spent praying and reading a Bible—then it was idolatry.

And I remembered a dear friend who I watched get so much joy from creating art decide to sell all their paintings and then give away all their paints and canvases, excising art neatly out of their life so it would not be idolatrous.

And I think of pink sparkles, bridges and airplanes, Shadow the Hedgehog, baby cats and magic wishes.

Maybe I love what they love,

maybe God loves what I love,

maybe God loves what I love because I love it,

maybe God loves what I love because I am their child,

maybe God loves what I love because God loves me,

and maybe the wish was never to cut oneself off from all the delight the universe has to offer in order to meet with Goodness in an empty void.

Maybe the Goodness was in all of it.

Maybe the Goodness was all of it.