The Road Forward

What does it look like when the candidate you back does not get elected?

The road through Cartago, Costa Rica near the Virgin de Los Angeles Cathedral where folks pilgrimage to yearly to see the black virgin statue. Here we are again!

There’s a Christian song I like with the lyrics “I’m still waiting for something new to break my heart….” and I’m sort of feeling it today. It’s gray and rainy so I cannot even escape to the beach to deal with my big feelings today. Beach walking does help.

Someone somewhere was bound to be unhappy about yesterday’s election. I know I am. I didn’t vote for Trump. I wasn’t wild about Harris either. Not telling you who I voted for, let’s say you’d likely be very surprised. I rarely vote party, always vote the person that lines up with my own favored issues. I have voted all over the map. So I am among that half of the country whose candidates lost!

Thank heavens there’s been no violence so far! At least some small good can come from these times.

Last night as I was praying, listening to worship music and praying again for mercies and no violence during the election I started to hear a word I did not want to hear. I wanted to get something indicating that my fears were without merit. Instead I got this:

2 Chronicles 7:14 “If I ever shut off the supply of rain from the skies or order the locusts to eat the crops or send a plague on my people, and my people, my God-defined people, respond by humbling themselves, praying, seeking my presence, and turning their backs on their wicked lives, I’ll be there ready for you: I’ll listen from heaven, forgive their sins, and restore their land to health.”

I cringed, because I knew who would be winning, and what it might take to fix thing after hearing that. Hard words, man. I hate them, but I know when they arrive that they mean a great deal. Myself, and likely others, need to meditate on what this means and what it means going forward. Because, and make no mistake about it, we all are going forward whither we like it or not!

You can either embrace the future and all it brings, or you can be drug kicking and screaming into that same future. I don’t know about you but I don’t like being drug into anything.

We’re kind of in an odd time now, and yes, many are mourning. I know I am. I wish we could return to the way things used to be.

I wish we could return to a time when we could reach across the aisle and do things for the common good! To meet in the middle instead of the extremes of both parties. The last so many elections keep taking us lower and lower between the attack ads and rhetoric by both sides. Now the fractualism is worse. When did it become acceptable to pray for others to be physically harmed over politics?

As time has gone on, and Christian Nationalism has grown in many others while I’m merely post leaving my old church I’ve been increasingly uneasy with the alliance of religion with politics. When you start mixing politics and religion the only thing that happens is that you make both spheres weaker and increasingly hate-filled at the same time. This is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they drafted the Constitution. It is clear from their words during the birth of our nation that being Christian, the ‘right’ kind of Christian as dictated by others, isn’t what religion freedom means at all.

It’s ironic because the religion of the Pilgrims, of peaceable existence in a free land, would likely have them stand accused of all sorts of apostatize.

Let’s mourn today, but know that tomorrow we must shoulder our burdens and move forward. Eight years ago I went to bed at 7:30 pm because I had the flu, felt miserable needing sleep and I thought it was all over - that Hillary Clinton had won the election. I was disabused of that notion when I was poked awake at 5:00 am by my editor to get up and write. I got up and saw that Donald Trump had been elected after all the polls and pundits told us it was impossible. That day I wrote a piece for No Longer Quivering that’s no longer archived that basically said “Don’t Freak Out!”

Today I say exactly the same thing - Don’t freak out. Politics come and go. Politicians come and go, world without end. During his first administration Trump didn’t entirely burn down the country while fiddling like a fiend because of the guard rails in place of our society and the fact that he surrounded himself with folks that had no idea how to do things. Did you know that Rick Perry had no idea that the Dept. of Energy oversaw the nuclear power plants before he was secretary (2017-2019). Trump surrounds himself with incompetency that ends up spinning their wheels more than actually enacting too many toxic things. Trump’s deep unpreparedness was on full display during the Covid Pandemic, where he promptly dropped the ball.

For me the absolute worst thing about this election is that I suffer from a mast cell disorder almost no one has heard of, Mastocytosis. I need piles of medications to stay away. While I can get many of them here in Costa Rica there are a number of things so specialized that I have no choice but to fly back to the States. I get my vaccine boosters when I go. I’ve been revaxxed for Whooping Cough four times and four times I’ve had it and combined with my severe asthma was the Mastocytosis it’s just about taken me out.

Why am I worried about the changes to my access to medicines and vaccines. One name - RFK Jr. He’s supposed to be appointed over the Dept. of Health and talking of ending all vaccines and deliberately dismantling the FDA. As someone that depends now on newer emerging experimental drugs combined with a few tried and true this is frightening news indeed. I am hardly the only one frightened over this, I’ve talked to so many on social media freaking out over possibly losing meds, disablity and other funding.

I’ll be seeking out my doctor in the next few days and making arrangement for alternatues and backups. I am making plans so that if this worst case scenario plays out I am covered. We will also be reapplying for residency here. We’ve been kicked out of the system twice through no fault of our own. The first time happened during Covid and later after Covid during a government computer hack.

So don’t freak out. Make plans. Think rationally about how to proceed and then do it. That’s literally all we can do. That and pray that this time is like last time that our incoming president is surrounded by sheer stupidity.

I hope I’m wrong and that Trump has some sort of change of heart about many things. But I think we must be prepared.

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Posts here may be thin on the ground until December because I am participating yet again in Nanowrimo - that write a novel in a month organization that raises money for literacy programs in the States. I used to participate every year. Last year I had no ideas. This year I’m exploring a kernal of an idea I had about a female cultural enforcer in a high demand religion group that decides since she cannot divorce her husband she’s going to kill him by being super submissive and allowing him to do very foolish things. Black comedy actually based on the horrid advice given by a few of these ladies.