apolitical

Yesterday was probably the most pop-political day of 2008 for me. I try to stay out of political conversations for the most part because I believe politics is local. So if you're gonna talk big, I want to know that you're attending and doing your part in local government before I'll listen to your top-down views of things.

Ennyhoo. I got a phone call from our preschool warning that because the President was in town and the motorcade would be driving the street the preschool is on, we might experience some traffic or other delays.

I was the 4th car behind the policeman who stopped traffic at the turnoff before the preschool. As I sat and tried to explain to Elli and Addi who the president was, what he does, why he needs so much fanfare and security etc., I saw people pulling out their camera phones or parking their cars to get out and watch the motorcade drive by. And I got into the moment a little more.

Had I known I'd actually be in the vicinity of the motorcade, twice, I would like to think I would have made a sign. I think it would have said, "I'm gonna miss you". Because I am.

Despite what has or hasn't happened during this presidency, I've been at peace. Knowing that a man who knows God personally is in charge of our country has been all I needed to know about him to trust he and his wife to represent us and make decisions for us. They've been kind of like a mom and dad. I don't always understand their decisions, or agree with them, but I trust them enough to hope they know what they are doing and see how things play out. And even if we disagree on something, I still stay on their team and keep things cordial with them.

I was thinking about all of this while I was mowing the lawn later that afternoon. "What if George Bush drove up our street, and saw me mowing our lawn and stopped to ask me some questions?", I thought. "What questions would he ask me? Would it be things like 'who are you going to vote for in the next election?' or 'how is your family doing in this time of economic stress?'." (Sorry, I forget how punctuation works with questions inside of thoughts inside of hypothetical conversations)

My answers would be:
1. I haven't done my homework yet. (I'm envisioning an hour or two on my own at the library to look up each candidate's bio, information, platforms, and maybe watch a bit of each debate before making a totally media-free decision--one plus of not having cable and rarely watching TV. I haven't seen a single commentary or commercial because I refuse to watch them) And I haven't really prayed about who to vote for yet.
2. We are rich. For some reason our family of 5, living on one income has enough, and even extra. So much that we are able to expand our family one more time as well as help others to get through these tough times.

I kinda got stuck there. Thinking back to our first house and how we lived the life of excess and how quarrelly and stressed out it made us sometimes. How we've lived with debt and how imprisoning and weighty it is.And how God--just in the nick of time--prompted us to re-vamp our way of living and attack that debt with a ferocity that abolished it in half the time we thought we could do it and has allowed us to live the most freeing and generous life since. How that insane period of paying everything off prepared us to step into an economy riddled with dourness and uncertainty and not be burdened with worry about finances. How living simply allows us to simply live.

Why a God who felt so distant during depression and months of silence on our end would still bestow His grace in our lives. Like a parent tucking a note in a lunchbox, or a 5 dollar bill in your cupholder.

As I go through a Bible study re-affirming the foundations of my faith, it is so eye-opening to revisit anew a relationship that has morphed so many times I wonder if it will ever lose its elasticity and turn into a gooey blob. The first night when an older lady said, "I'm falling in love with Jesus all over again", my eyebrows instinctively furrowed. My knee-jerk cynic chalked it up to one of those, "touchy-feely" people syndromes.

But I'm starting to "feel" that too. And I am NOT a toucher. Those of you who know me know that is true.

So when I attack my husband with two hugs within a span of an hour in our kitchen, it's because I'm falling in love again. With more than Jesus. I'm mending relationships and re-kindling friendships that have fallen along the wayside as my path tunnel-visioned for a while there.

And so, for me, one of the more important aspects of who I vote for will be someone who I feel seeks the heart of Jesus. Can I ever get close enough to either of the candidates to seriously ask them about their relationship with Him? No. Have they been asked about religion? Yes. Can I trust God to give me wisdom to know who to cast my vote for? Yes. Does God care? Yup, He does. And I do too.

And I'm thankful that whatever happened years ago with hanging chads and electoral votes and re-counts and breaking news to see who actually won the election happened. Because these past 4 years have been hard enough on our family in lots of ways, but at least we've been pretty unscathed by decisions that have been made on our behalf politically.

We've paid our taxes and we've benefited from government programs, so I will certainly be exercising my civic duty to vote. I just don't know for whom that vote will be...yet.