Living in hard times is nothing new. If you look back on history (and you need not go far), people have been presented with awful, horrific situations as bad or worse than what’s happening in modern day America, since the beginning of time. Floods, fires, pandemic, inequity, misogyny, racism, economic insecurity, climate change, partisan politics, to name a few. There are an abundance of examples of this in the Bible as well and on the morning after the news of another blow to 2020, the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, I found myself looking to God for answers to my biggest, burning question: How can you send so much grief and angst to Your people in one year?!
Today is the day! It’s finally here. Although if it were a year ago, my sense of peace and serenity in this moment would be a little easier, not slightly clouded by a thought that something could go wrong. The first day of school.
Even as thoughts of possible COVID situations appear like unwanted wasps circling my head, I have been laser focused on this day for weeks, the day when one very important part of all our lives returns to some semblence of a different kind of normal. In-person school.
The pros and cons have been considered. The school plan studied, questioned and verified, giving weight to the decision to send our son back to school where he was a once thriving student who loved to learn. The year feels like the freshest start we have ever needed after months of home/online school, a dearth of activities to keep us occupied over the summer months, and spending altogether too much time together in close quarters.
The printer at work was giving me a run for my money last week. If it wasn’t callibrating, warming up or asking for new toner (it needed all four cartridges replaced in three days time), it was going into power save mode and to wake it up I had to open and close the paper tray several times which usually does the trick. More than once I simply turned it off, took a few deep breaths and turned it back on. And of course this is going to happen when the workload that requires a bunch of printing is at it’s height!
My job is not stressful. I work in the Faith Formation office at my Catholic church and spend most of my three day a week gig organizing for the in-person weekend mass as well as corraling volunteers to help give out communion in the parking lot. My favorite part is talking to parishioners who call to sign up for mass and I get to learn about the intricacies of their lives as I become a trusted listener.
For several months I have been consciously avoiding the news which isn’t easy when your husband turns on CNN before bed most evenings. Turn off the hearing aids and whala – no more news. The reason is mainly because I hate politics as much as Michelle Obama claims to and I do understand it is a necessary evil but the rhetoric of Trump’s campaign was really getting to me.
I decided to tune into the Democratic convention and thought it was well done. It kept my attention all four nights and the words spoken were a balm to the crushing, anxiety inducing rhetoric coming out of the White House these days. By the Friday morning after the convention I felt my anxiety lift as hope took over and that in a short time there would soon be adults running our country again. Optimism for our country’s future was on the upswing. And that’s when I started to tune into the news more.
Big mistake. Once again, Trump has managed to make my anxiety for our country soar. We need someone with feelings, empathy and heart leading us in these uncommon and hard times. He doesn’t seem to care the USA is number one in COVID deaths by a good percentage of the overall population and he keeps saying it’s going to “disappear”. He lives in a different world than the rest of us, I guess. He incites radical behavior, fueling the fires of unrest and blaming it all on Joe Biden who IS NOT PRESIDENT.
My optimism has faded as I read the latest polls which has Biden and Trump a bit too close for comfort. How do we live in a society that doesn’t care about equality and the health of our neighbors? How have Republicans let this man (and family) take over a party that didn’t used to be so radical? Who can we blame for all of this? The people who didn’t exercise their voting rights in 2016?
I have become used to gently rolling my eyes at my husband, a lifelong Republican, who feels it is his patriotic duty to gobble up all the books that lay bare the sins of Donald Trump. I do not wish to know how truly bad he is although I have more than an inkling. But when it came to hearing what Melania was about (because we have barely heard a peep from her in four years), I couldn’t help but be drawn to a New York Times article about the new book her former friend wrote. The last sentance of the article left me chilled. Melania claimed to her friend who was worried she was having a nervous breakdown that “You give people nervous breakdown, you don’t have it your own”. I, for one, do not wish to live in a country that promotes this kind of anxiety and I hope I am not the only one.
I Am Writing 