tail or wings?

sitting around a kitchen table tonight, in a spot that i have occupied on and off for well over a decade, i debated whether the appropriate choice for an additional appendage would be a tail or wings.  what would be the benefits and function of each?  how would they look?  the father of the house noted that we should not be drinking wine.  we should be drinking coke.  we should not be twenty-six, we should be eleven.

once or twice a year now, i have the pleasure of being with the other three quarters of the fearsome foursome all at once.  friends since middle school (one i have be bff's with since kindergarten), we are scattered and never seem to occupy the same places two years in a row.  we are sisters and friends.   we are a part of each others families.  we have laughed and cried. been to weddings and funerals.  picked each other up from falling apart. laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.  

i learned love from my family.  but i learned that you could choose to love people, long term, from these most fabulous ladies.  there have been rough patches, big and small petty and dramatic, but it is in that circle where i pounded out my identity.  sometimes, these three ladies bore the brunt of that process... and they kept on loving me anyway.  they didn't have to.  we are not related. i don't have to see them at christmas or the awkward family function.  it would be easy to drift apart or break up, as happens with friends from long ago life stages.  but we haven't.  here we sit, each moving at different paces in different directions (with equal passion and verve) but all having paused to breathe each other's air, be recharged, to keep on keepin' on.  they helped me discover who i am... gifts and liabilities, pretty and ugly... and keep shaping me today.  

so in this week, when i ponder the love that brought God incarnate to walk among us, i experience that love around that table, in that circle as i carry it with my on my many sojourns.

i picked wings.  kelly picked a tail.  sarah can't imagine wanting a fifth appendage. and cathy is mystified that we brought it up at all.  i think there was eye rolling as well.