I wrote this earlier in a conversation and edited it for broader consumption. It is mostly my reflection on Tuesday and the last 18 months leading up to the election.
This election process was horrible. It typically went beyond party affiliation to utter hatefulness and bullying belittling on both sides and it was just awful. Peaceful voices were few and far between. They still are.
President-elect Trump kind of scares me, honestly, though he scares me less than Hillary does. I pray he realizes he is in over his head (as anyone who takes the office of POTUS is) and has the grace to lead well. I couldn’t, in good conscience, tell my children that I voted for either one of the two main contenders, so I wrote in someone else. That is neither here nor there as it relates to this.
But aside from the personality at the top, what bothers me more is the national discord. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s much of what is so upsetting to all of us. I hate that this is the climate where we are bringing up our kids. Where my African-American friend is scared that her son will be seen as a statistic, not a person. Where there are rumors that our Mexican neighbors will have to leave and never come back. I hate this for the majority of the kids in my kids’ school. (It’s less than 10% white, and about 10% Asian, so being biracial, my kids are double minority there, with around 30% African-American and almost the rest of the school’s population being Hispanic–mostly Mexican. Their mock election did not choose who was voted in.) No doubt it’s been ugly at times. I don’t know what it has been like at school this week, what the teachers are dealing with or what the kids have heard from their parents. I was there briefly this morning and everyone I saw seemed to be in good spirits, though. They’re working together and looking out for one another, and for the children in their care.
If there’s one thing I have learned in recent years from a particular group of wonderful women I’ve come to know over the past 7+ years, it is that everyone has their own story and their own perspective. We all come from vastly different backgrounds, and the one thing that brought us together is that our children are the same age. We’ve had some crazy ups and downs, losses, promotions, life changes, the beginnings and/or ends of marriages, moves, new babies, and a million laughs. But there have been some dramatic conversations, and some have moved on, but most have stayed. The reason is because we do value one another and know that deep down we just want what is best for our children and the ones we love. It gets messy and we all often have different ways of getting to the same basic conclusion, and some of us will never see eye to eye. But that is alright. What I have learned is that it is vital to first know who they are and care about them, and second to hear them. I am not as closed minded as I was before I knew these friends. We still don’t agree on everything, but that doesn’t matter; I don’t have to give up my world view to hear, understand, and care. Relationship and a common goal for one another’s welfare are primary. If we can’t remember that, then we will close off a lot of relationships, and cause a lot of strife. This is one of the best things we can teach our children as well. Can we disagree with a friend, and still remain friends? Can we still respect them, even at home when we are tempted to drop snide remarks?
Surviving events like this takes deliberately going out of our way to be caring and hopeful and loving and accepting of the people we’re around. To be truthful, just surviving life well means doing these things. We can’t change everything, but we can be kind; we can raise good kids, we can love our kids’ classmates; we can reach out to our neighbors, and coworkers, the ones who are different from us, hear their stories and lend a hand; we can stand up for the ones being bullied in our newsfeed. We can also learn when to shut up and let some things go. We can listen to the concerns they have, and try to find solutions. There are a lot of people who ought to be ashamed of their attitudes and their words. Let’s be careful to say things full of real love and hope, not disdain or facts masquerading as “the truth in love.”
My perspective may be different than yours, but I don’t hate you; if I know you, I love you–and probably even like you. Your fears are real; though fears are tricky in that most of the time they are not realized and only steal from our ability to live where we are. We all have some legitimate fears about the situation at hand. Just like many had legitimate fears the last time a new president was elected. Let’s earnestly pray for our leadership, all the way up from local to presidential. Prayer changes our hearts, and changes real situations. We can afford for both of those to happen, can’t we?
Our country is great, and I am grateful beyond words to have been born and raised here. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all who have gone before me and served in life and death for this country. I am thankful that my children are learning about the democratic process, and the peaceful(-ish) transition of power that we enjoy in the United States. I’m thankful they are growing up where there is freedom to voice themselves, to worship as we choose, and to disagree civilly without fearing retribution. But America is not the end all, be all. Is our hope in a human leader, in a policy, or in a single party? Hope deferred or misplaced does make the heart sick. There are a lot of heartsick people in our lives today. Let’s offer hope, not rhetoric.
For those who follow Jesus, what does our faith and our hope and our love have to say about this situation? Empires rise and fall. Do you remember Rome? It was pretty stable for a while, and even offered many of these fantastic liberties to its citizens. But we do speak of it in the past tense. May America last many, many centuries beyond us. But if it does not, will we be OK? Will our children? Are our kids any different from the kids from 19 centuries ago, whose families were thrown to wild animals for mass entertainment because they chose Jesus over Nero? We are a long way from that sort of dramatic display in this country, but I’d like to think that no matter what goes down in our part of history, no matter where we live, we are imparting courage, faith, and love in our kids, so they are the heroes of their generation, day to day. And if we are to pass that down to our kids, then we need to be faithful to look to heaven and beg that we embody those traits in ourselves.