Tanning is gold

*I tried to post the following last night but there was some error. I am too lazy to correct the tenses. Oops.*

Random fact: Right before I sat down to write this, I tried to do a back flip off the couch. I failed. Epically. My neck hurts. That was dumb.

Today, the weather in Houston was “Africa Hot”. It was the choice of myself and two of my friends to sit poolside for the afternoon…in the heat of the day. I lubed up with some awesome sunscreen (yes mom, I used sunscreen) that contained a great bronzer, and now I am pretty golden brown.

I love being tan. It’s not a superficial thing. (Okay, it might be a little bit, let’s call a spade a spade…) I just love the feeling of being tan. I feel healthier. I assume I look better. There’s a very apparent glow about me that comes not anything having to do with hormones, and I like it.  I could sit by the water slash in the water on something that floats all the livelong day and be pretty content.

(Side note: I could also live in my swimsuit. It’s not a nudist thing or anything, it just feels good and free. I’m pretty sure that if you were to ask my mother what I was like as a child, I probably went through a phase in which I pranced around in a Minnie Mouse swimsuit and red cowgirl boots for a period of time. That was probably also around the time my parents let me dress myself – a poor choice they made which still at times has ramifications, like now. I don’t think I look awesome of anything in a swim suit, I just like feeling free and comfortable. So sue me. Okay, please don’t…) Back to tanning...

I thought about being tan as I drove my happy butt home to get ready for Mass…

When I went to Mass this evening, I was a tad bit vain and I noticed how much darker I was a few hours later. Okay, I’ll admit, I was straight up distracted because I was so giddy with the tan-ness. But something in the music tonight brought me back in to focus. A lot of the songs were about shining. And light. And love. Some of my fav things, to be quite honest. Favies. As I listened to the readings for the Sunday and the awesome homily by Father Troy, it hit me in a newer way – as much as I was happy being tan, I was changed. I like being tan because I look different. My body is physically changed when I’m tan. The melanin in my skin does a crazy wack-a-do thing and I appear different. Also, there’s an increase of Vitamin D (which, fun fact was discovered in the early 1900s to cure rickets) and there’s a connection between mood and sun exposure. People in warmer and sunnier climates are typically happier and healthier – thanks to that boost of Vitamin D and the good ol’ big yellow thing in the sky. When you are in the sun, it changes you.

You’re changed when you’re in the Son. (I know, I know…that sounds totally cliché. But things are cliché usually because they are true. They’re true and they get repeated and hence become cliché…you get the idea.) When we receive the Love of the Father, thanks to the Son, brought to you with no commercial interruptions by the Holy Spirit, we are transformed. Love transforms everything.

Now as I look awesomely “girl-next-door” tan (that’s for you Josh), and am physically different now, so too am I changed by the Love of Christ in my own heart. It starts beneath the surface. When you tan in the sun, it all begins in the lower layers of your epidermis (hello, McFly, you’re epidermis is showing – ps, that’s your skin) and melanin is released by melanocytes. (What? Are surprised? I know stuff. I had to take Anatomy and Physiology for a year in college. I know the body. I even had to dissect a cat. Different story for a different day.) Tanning starts beneath. So does love. God loves us and we in turn are changed and love Him. We may even shine that love to others. And God who is faithful (even when we are not) keeps loving us and through us. But first and foremost, loving us. You+Me=Us. I know my calculus.

Get out of your own way. Receive God’s ferocious and burning love. Let it transform you. Change you. Tan you. A side effect of it all will be a certain glow – knowing that you are loved and in turn you can love. God, your neighbor, yourself. Take some time to bask in the rays…in both senses of the word. Double entendre. Wordplay. Pun. True. Cliché, but true.