Why this Election Feels so Personal

“The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood, but the speech of the upright rescues them.” (Proverbs 12:6 NIV)

There are many posts here that I have fought writing. But no fight has been longer and harder, than the battle to write this one. I have wanted to tell the stories of everyone else. I have wanted to expose their pain and their trauma, because I know it runs deep and it is unending. In all of it, I have resisted the rumble in my belly to tell my own story. I don’t want to tell you because I don’t think my story is as important as the stories of my brothers and sisters. I don’t want to tell you because I am afraid it will make you think I can’t be objective. But really, I don’t want to tell you because it is personal, because acknowledging it is still very new, and because the pain runs deep.

I am away on a short retreat as I write these words. I just finished a couple posts and I decided it was time for a break. I put my computer down, deciding to sit and read. But as soon as I read the following words, I knew I was done. I had to keep going. I had to tell my story.

The words were penned by Danielle Espiritu, who is of Native (Kanaka Maoli) Hawaiian descent and spends her life advocating for justice and pursuing healing, reconciliation, and abundant life in Jesus. I didn’t have to read much of what she had to say, only her recollection of the night upon which Trump won the presidency:

“I remember all too vividly the night of Trump’s election. I recognize now that the stillness and rush of those memories are consistent with trauma. It’s as if everything was happening in slow motion as the world around rushed by. Past the initial shock, the looming cloud of sorrow began to set in.”

I immediately shut the book. It was as if I were reading the very words God had been telling me to write for the last 3 ½ years. Because the trauma she speaks of? It was my trauma. The mourning she speaks of? It was my mourning. For me, as for her, this was not political disappointment. This mourning was as personal as it gets.

On the night Danielle speaks of, I didn’t stay up to see the final numbers posted. Trump was in the lead, but I was certain there was no way he could actually win. As my alarm went off to get the kids ready for school, I looked to my phone for assurance of my assumption:

Trump Wins Presidential Election

Was this really happening? How could this be real? What would this mean for our nation? So many questions. So, few answers. But the tears didn’t come until I asked aloud in my mind: “How am I going to tell my children?” It was a question that had brought tears to my eyes only one other time: the day my father had passed away. I lay there weeping in utter disbelief.

My mom was staying with us and when we looked at each other for the first time that morning the grief was so deeply written on our faces. We didn’t need to say a word. We walked through that day like zombies—thankful to have each other but not really knowing how to make sense of or come to terms with what had just happened. Though even then, she didn’t know the deepest source of my despair—no one did.

I remember thinking it was a joke when I read that Donald Trump was running for President. Aside from all of my personal opinions about the character of the man, the question I kept coming back to was this: what in the world could qualify this man to run a nation? I remember sitting in a hotel room in Orlando, Florida and seeing the primary results from yet another state: “Donald Trump takes….” I immediately felt nauseous: “What universe am I living in right now?!”

As he continued to open his mouth and spew out all kinds of vulgarities and insults, my heart became enraged. I wouldn’t let my children watch any news because this candidate for President was speaking in all of the ways I had spent their entire precious lives teaching them to never speak in. That would have been enough. I knew I could never vote for him. But, I had no idea how much worse it could get. Not until the day it happened.

Of course, political discourse and strategy has descended deeper and deeper into the pits of hell in recent years. No candidate is pure; no campaign is without sin. There are always accusations. Some prove to be true. Others are just mudslinging. But when the words are on tape; when the words are spoken aloud without any repentance or remorse—that is where genuine concern needs to come into the picture. And here were the words, captured forever on tape:

“I did try and f#$% her. She was married… I moved on her like a b%&#@, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s not got the big phony tits and everything… I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

You see these words struck hard and struck deep, because 21 years prior, a young, wealthy privileged teenage boy thought it was also okay to do anything—to grab me “by the pussy.” It was a secret I had held in my heart all that time. Not a single person knew—not my husband, not my mother, not my best friend: no one.

It was a “small act” in comparison with the horrific stories I have heard from brave women over the years about their own victimization at the hands of men who would never experience any consequences for their actions. And yet, it had shaped the course of my life.

At the time I didn’t tell anyone because I truly thought it was my fault—that I had somehow brought it on myself; that I was guilty for not running away and immediately outing this young man for what he had done. I was embarrassed. The shame came immediately. I took all the guilt upon myself. I stuffed it deep. I knew he shouldn’t have done it. And yet I really believed that since he did, I must have deserved it.

I don’t think I realized how much this incident had affected the trajectory of my life until Trump’s words hit the news stations. A huge tear in my heart that I had managed to hold together with random safety pins, tacks and paper clips came bursting open. I realized that that thing which I thought “did not affect me” in fact, affected everything. I realized that the years of depression really started shortly after that incident. I realized that my complicated relationship with men was rooted in this experience. And I realized that so much of my drive to “do the right thing” was a result of this moment when I felt like I didn’t.

I could not unhear those words. They surrounded me. They tore at my soul. My heart was hemorrhaging blood. And yet I continued in my silence. Even at 36; even as a Christian who had been to counseling and was very intentional about her soul work; I just wasn’t ready to let that fact come into the light. Instead, I lived day after day watching as more states decided, that even after hearing these words, this man was exactly what our nation needed to “make it great.” And what is said to me was this: “You are expendable. Your pain is not as important as a policy or political agenda.”

But here’s the thing—I was not alone. This was not the end. It was only the beginning.

The verbal assaults continued to come fast and furious. It seemed that every time he opened his mouth, a dagger came out with yet a new target. The handicapped community had to watch him make insulting gestures in mockery of them. And they knew, he was not there to make their lives great. Latinos and immigrants listened as he called people coming into the country from Mexico “criminals and rapists.” And they knew that he was not “for them.”

I imagine the trauma that hit our indigenous brothers and sisters when Trump mocked his political opponent Elizabeth Warren’s Native American ancestry by calling her “Pocahontas” and then appearing to use a horrific moment in American history, the Trail of Tears, as an attack on her as he tweeted “See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!” Another jab; another trauma.

And when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, 2020 happened. I will never forget the moment when I was somehow allowing my kids to watch a press conference about the coronavirus. A reporter mentioned how one of Trump’s aids had referred to Covid-19 as the “Kung Fu Flu.” He asked if he supported this (clearly racially insensitive) terminology. His response: “I don’t have a problem with it” led to further suspicion of and violence against countless Asian Americans in our nation. Stab.

And where do we begin to explain the continued trauma on the black community, especially in the wake of the murder of George Floyd?! Do I need to write it all down here? Or can we all agree that Trump’s claim on Twitter that he had “done more for the black community than any president since Abraham Lincoln” was the most far-fetched and insulting comment to a people continuing to live under oppression and racism so many years after we supposedly “rectified our ways by ending slavery?”

It wasn’t long after the truth emerged about how long Trump knew just how deadly the coronavirus was, that he himself succumbed to it. I did pray for our president’s healing, just as I pray for the healing of all who have been affected by this terrible virus. But, I did hope that his personal experience would lead him to compassion and action. Instead, as he readied himself to leave Walter Reed following his treatment, he declared to a nation who had already lost over 200,000 loved ones: “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.” And with this another barb to every “long-hauler,” to every mourning family member, and to every health care worker living with the trauma and fear of this deadly disease every day.

And it didn’t end there. The words kept coming and launching at more and more targets. “It’s just words,” people would say. They would defend the insensitivity by saying it was all harmless and just his personality. I do think it is his personality. But is that an excuse? Harmless? No. And here’s the thing that showed these were more than mere “regrettable rhetoric:”

His words were then backed up with policies and actions that affirmed that he meant every single one of them.

Shortly after his insensitive remarks about not letting Covid-19 dominate our lives, he declared that he would not vote on an economic relief plan until after the election. Instead, he asked Republican senators to focus on installing his Supreme Court nominee. He soon took the comment back, but the damage was done, and the message was clear. While many Republicans were elated to hopefully get a judge in there who would help overturn Roe vs. Wade, others properly identified the cruelty of also hoping for a judge who would overturn the Affordable Health Care Act. In this moment, his actions showed that he cared neither for those who were suffering economically because of the pandemic, nor for those covid “long haulers” who would forever have a “pre-existing condition” and could very well lose the health care they so desperately needed because of a virus he admittedly chose from the very beginning to “downplay.”

His actions also came against indigenous populations and people of color as he called for the creation of a commission on “Patriotic Education,” due to his concern that history teachers’ focus on slavery has “taught children to hate their country.” His actions would no doubt portray a narrative in which Manifest Destiny justified the horrific murder and dislocation of Native peoples whose lives and spirituality were deeply connected to the land. His actions sought to continue to paint slavery as a necessary evil in the development of our “great nation.” I can’t image how painful it would be to have my President trying so hard to rewrite my history and degrade my identity.

His support of this “Patriotic Education” also equated teaching the concept of systemic racism as being a form of child abuse. Let’s add to that rubber bullets and teargas being used on peaceful protestors. And then there was the ban he enforced on federal agencies and contractors holding racial sensitivity trainings that were attempting to encourage conversations about race and systemic racism. And of course, who can forget his refusal to publicly condemn white supremacy when given the opportunity to do so. Can you imagine sitting there again and again just hoping this time, maybe things will be different—maybe he will change his tune and stand up for my body and for my soul, only to be met with silence?

His words about foreigners entering the country being “bad people” have been backed up by many policies and actions. The biggest one, of course, being the wall he was willing to shut the government down to see built. But then there was his refusal to accept new DACA applications, causing many “dreamers” who were born in this country to live in fear of deportation and separation from the only nation and family they had known. He radically reduced the number of refuges allowed into the country. And do we even need to talk about the separation of children from their parents at the border? Can you even imagine having your child taken from you and the trauma that would cause them? Please imagine it!

That one recording of our president speaking with such confidence, fearlessness and pride about a sexual conquest was enough for me. But then there was the news that my taxes as a citizen of this beautiful country would be used to defend that same man against yet another accusation of sexual assault. And through my mind flashed not only that incident that changed my life forever, but the faces and stories of all the women who had been victimized sexually in ways that would break the heart of anyone who truly has one. And I thought about the ways that none of them ever saw justice. Where does it end? When will the hurting be over? When will we all get a break?

I have heard all the theories about why “Donald Trump is the man we need at the helm at this moment in history.”

• The culture is evil, and the church is going to be forced underground.
• Our economy is in shambles and we need someone who will lead us into out.
• The life of millions of unborn babies will be taken if we vote otherwise.
• Our history is being rewritten in a way that brings shame to our country.

I have heard people say that we need to vote for policy. I have heard the statement too many times: “I am voting for the platforms, not the person.” I have heard that these things matter more than the character of the person in charge. And with each of those statements, another staple pops and I cry out to Jesus to come quickly.

Because here’s the thing: what our nation needs now is not “law and order,” decisive strength, or even “the right Supreme Court justices.” What our nation needs now is empathy, mercy, and compassion. What our nation needs is healing.

We need healing personally and inter-personally, healing across races, across genders, across party lines. We are currently a deeply wounded nation. And while I don’t think Joe Biden is going to come in with every proper tool in his belt to help bring that healing about fully, I know that the healing that is needed will never be possible under the leadership of Donald Trump.

What I believe a Biden presidency will bring is a chance for those of us who have been gasping for air for the last 4 years to finally have a chance to breathe. Our government will never save us; it will never solve all of the problems; it will never be the primary source of healing. That is not what it is there for. But I do believe this: healing cannot come while the leader of our nation is using words and power like weapons.

And I believe, if those who are grasping for breath can finally get some air, we can begin this work of healing.

Healing will need to come through all realms of society. It will need to happen in personal relationships through honest and loving talking and listening. It will need to happen in our communities by agreeing to listen to people’s stories and concerns with hearts of compassion. It will need to happen in our churches through a wrestling with who we have been and where we have sat in the midst of this great wounding. And in all of those spaces, it will need to happen with great repentance.

I do not write this because I am a “left-wing socialist extremist.” Actually, if you had access to my voting records, you might be very surprised by what you saw. I do not write because “speaking up against political leaders is what I do.” Actually, I believe the last time I spoke in any judgment against a president or presidential candidate was when Clinton’s extramarital relationship came to light. These words are not motivated by political platform or even personal gain. These words are motivated by my heart for Jesus.

These words are motivated by a deep belief in the dignity and worth of every human being made in God’s image and likeness. While I deeply grieve all the lives lost through abortion, I also grieve all of the lives that are taken not in a moment, but over a lifetime. I grieve the ways that dignity has been granted to some, while robbed of others. I grieve the way that black lives, elderly lives, handicapped lives, immigrant lives, native lives, Muslim lives, incarcerated lives and so many more lives have been shown to be of less worth. If we say we are pro-life, let’s live it not just from conception to birth, but from conception to natural death.

These words are motivated by the words I read of Jesus. I could go on for hours talking about the new ways Jesus’ words and actions have come alive to me in these past few years. The Jesus I have been reintroduced to was one who welcomed foreigners. He was one who healed the sick no matter what their socioeconomic status. He was one who valued women in a way that was radical for his time. He was the one who brought together people of different races, cultures, and backgrounds in order to establish a radical new community based on love, grace and forgiveness. The Jesus I know was harsh when it came to religious hypocrisy and systemic evil and patient and forgiving when it came to personal failings. He called us to do better on both ends. And He made that possible through His sacrifice on the cross. 

Finally, these words are motivated by a deep desire to see the Church be the place of love, healing and the kind of unconditional acceptance Jesus died for it to be. If I am honest, the ways that I have seen evangelical Christians stand behind and in defense of so much evil during the last 4 years has made me wonder if there is still a place for me there. It has made me question if I can still faithfully and fully belong in that world. Were it not for Jesus, I probably would not. But as I go back to the gospels and see a man whose way was Love and Justice and Truth, I have hope. And as I see a man who determined it right to build His Church on a simple fisherman who tried to keep him from the cross and in His deepest time of need denied him three times, I realize that as impossible as it seems now, and as crazy as it feels, He still has a wonderful plan to bless all nations through what He intends from this radically diverse and inclusive community He calls His bride.

Maybe you are a victim of sexual abuse who does not feel this way; I am happy for you. I wouldn’t wish pain like this on anyone. BUT, I write because there are many who do. Maybe you are a person of color who does not feel that systemic racism has held you back; I am happy for you. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. But I write because there are many who do. Maybe you are a person with a handicap of some sort who was not personally wounded by the comments of our president; I am happy for you. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. But I write because there are many who do.

And on November 3^rd I will vote. I will vote for me. I will vote for my sons and especially for my daughter.  And I will vote for yours. I will vote for the planet God entrusted to our care. I will also vote for all the people who are struggling to breathe right now. I will vote for the wounds to be healed; for you to know that you have utmost worth and dignity in my eyes and most importantly in God’s. And above all, I will vote for this nation to be healed. As crazy as it may seem, I believe the depths we have fallen to are actually the most fertile ground for true change to happen, for true love to grow.  And so, it seems appropriate in this moment to end with the words John uses to end his letter of Revelation, the words God chose to end the Bible with, and the words I pray daily for our nation and our world:

“Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” (Revelation 22:20b)