Y’all, I’m tired.
I’m just flat out exhausted, worn out, drained, tired.
I loved the book, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. If you have read it, you know the movie did not disappoint.
One of my favorite lines is when Aibileen says to Hilly, “All you do is scare and lie to try and get what you want. You a Godless woman. Ain’t you tired Miss Hilly? Ain’t you tired”
I want to put that scene on a jumbo screen for the entire country to see, and ask them all, “Ain’t you tired?”
I have never seen such disgusting behavior, nasty treatment for one another, vitriol and ugliness in my life. And I was in politics.
There are people in my life I have not heard from or spoken to in years, who decided to chime in on my personal social media posts recently, just to fight. No comments or well wishes when I talked about milestones or events Terry and I have faced over the years. No questions about how my parents were doing after they lost everything in the 2016 fire. No concern for our grieving family when my grandmother died. No follow up questions to see how Michala and I were doing, having lived through turmoil and our own hell. No texts or phone calls; letters or emails just to say hello and we are thinking about you.
But it seems this election cycle has truly brought out the snark and nasty in people, and I can hear Aibileen’s voice in my head asking, ‘Ain’t you tired?”
I keep making this example for people … losing sucks. I get it. I’m a VOL. We had a winning, awesome team when I was there, but for the love of all that is pure and holy … my VOLS just can’t seem to stay on a winning streak. I could storm Neyland Stadium and break into their locker room and leave an ugly mess behind … but I would only look like a petulant child who is a sore loser. The person who has more votes, wins. The one who wins is not a thief. The one who loses is not a victim. It’s just math. 81,283,485 > 74,223,744.
Math.
In the grand scheme of things, our lives are not going to be rocked nor rolled, by either President, unless we allow it. They are not going to walk into your house, tell you what you can or cannot eat, where you sit or what time you have to go to bed and get up in the morning. Your life is really not going to be dramatically changed by either one of them.
But your life can be dramatically changed by Jesus Christ.
I think an awful lot of us need to be less distracted by Donald Trump and Joe Biden and distract ourselves with the love, grace and mercy of our God.
“I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” - Psalm 16:8 (NIV)
I have some brilliant, precious friends who happen to support Donald Trump and I have some brilliant, precious friends who happen to support Joe Biden. I also have some mean-spirited folks in my life who seem to just wake up and smell the anger. As soon as they do, they decide the dragons they are going to slay are the people they have known for years, and years … not the actual dragons.
I have struggled with typing for a while thanks to my graceful fall where I broke my right thumb and hand. The cortisone shot helped, immensely, but then I found myself struggling to type words that build, rather than words that leave a sting.
I am tired. I need a break from all of this, as I am sure you do, too.
Aibileen says at the very end of The Help, “God says we need to love our enemies. It hard to do. But it can start by telling the truth.”
We should be living our lives based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ; not the gospel of any candidate. Only in God’s Word will we find the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The truth for me is, I cannot stand the hatefulness and “me first” sentiment we are seeing. In order to distract myself, I need to focus solely on His Word, not anyone else’s.
I pray that each and every single one of you reading this will find ways to reflect Jesus today. And then tomorrow, I pray you will wake up and repeat.
I don’t know what it is going to look like when we are standing in His Kingdom being greeted for the very first time … but I am willing to guess Jesus isn’t going to say, “I am so proud of you for getting into fights about political candidates.” What I do hope He says to us is, “I am so glad you loved me more than anyone else.”