Finding Our Way

I couldn't sleep last night. With my husband out of state on business, and a little one next to me in bed, I tossed and turned. Seeing the votes come in, I kept whispering to myself, "It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay." State after state went red – even the swing states – and I finished a novel, willing my body to rest, and my mind to calm down.

It wouldn't calm down, because I knew it wouldn't be okay.

I was lying to myself, begging my body to sleep, and it couldn't.

When I woke up the next morning, bleary-eyed, I didn't know if I had the strength to go through the motions and get my kids ready for school. To tell them the news. To watch them wrestle with the same anger and grief I was.

I did, though, because women can do it all with a broken heart. After they left I called my husband to lament. I washed dishes and folded blankets and picked up toys. I worked out, and ate cold pie, and stood at my kitchen counter, sobbing, with tepid coffee in my hands. I saw this quote online and cried even harder:

"It looks hopeless 

because the hope was sucked out of the room.

Kind of a good news / bad news situation.

The good news is there's a door.

The bad news is that it's difficult to open.

Do you remember when we were kids

running down the hill,

now knowing if our legs could carry us?

This is how you must continue.

Wildly, wildly.

Unafraid of what will surely come."

Kate J Baer (From and Yet)

As hot tears rolled down my cheeks, I heard the college bells chime in the distance. Pausing, I let their chimes settle deep into my chest and calm me down. I was cold and exhausted, not just physically, but emotionally, so I got back into bed under my weighted blanket and tried to will peace into my soul.

Conjuring peace however, isn't something I'm good at. So I lay under three blankets and tried to feel warm again with no success. For days, I had fooled myself into thinking there was hope. With the shades pulled down  and the room unnaturally dim, I lay wondering what it would take for our country to actually find our way forward. To find peace by wrapping our arms around people rather than closing our borders. To find love by praising our differences rather than belittling those who are different. To find joy through unity rather than hatred through division. To find courage by defining "American" differently than we have in the past.

With heavy eyelids, I hid away and grieved until the chimes rung out again from the college campus. Hadn't they just sounded? Why were they ringing again? My soul stirred. The hope may have been sucked out of the room, but I could choose whether it was taken from me. I remembered my husband's suggestion to read Psalm 37, so wearily I pulled it out. 

If you too feel like your hope has been lost, may Psalm 37 be your way of grabbing wildly for what little remains. Your chimes that get you out of bed. Your poem that reminds you to be unafraid. Your cold pie at the kitchen counter as you cry. Though evil men have risen victorious throughout history, our hope is in the Lord, and no one – no matter how many electoral votes they received yesterday – can take that from us.