I haven’t had the heart to really continue the Before You Vote posts I was doing and that I promised dd. I have several drafts in my folders that are sitting there because they were upsetting me more, as I was writing them, more than comforting me. (They’re not really supposed to comfort me, but you know what I mean… sometimes you need to take a step back from the screen.)
Fighting the battles are always hard. This election year is especially difficult, personally, because #1, we’re having baby #5 and that just brings all the pro-life stuff home to me. I have first hand experience of how precious life is, right here, right now and there is no way anyone can convince me that a baby is just a blob of tissue that can be discarded anytime. If you could see my hubby and children crowd around my tummy, waiting for that new life to move, kick, anything — you would understand what I mean. Two, because I have a teen who’s very aware of the issues now and is at that stage in life where she is thinking seriously about her future — her vocation, career choices, whether she’s called to the convent or to marriage, what God wants her to do with her life, etc. Granted she still has lots of years ahead to make these decisions, but we’re laying the groundwork now (and even before) so that every decision is a God-filled one (we pray). Three, I always knew we were “different”, in fact the selfish part of me takes delicious pride in that often. We’ve chosen some paths that have made our family unique in some ways — even within the Catholic community, even within the Catholic homeschooling community (though that’s where I’ve found the most kindred spirits)! We’ve talked to our children about being counter-cultural, about going against the grain/swimming against the tide and all that. But whoa! Nothing prepares you for the realization come election year of just how different you are. I was talking to a dear friend just a couple of weeks ago and remarking how that morning I logged on to join a supposedly global poll being promoted at a Catholic blog and I was just absolutely shocked (I shouldn’t have been) that all my answers, save one, were opposite the majority. Yikes. Good thing she’s on my side and we’re both weird. 😀 And we raise our families to be “weird”. 😀
At this point I’m all reader’ed out and post’ed out and totally burned out from the election drama. All I have left is prayer. And so that’s what we’re be concentrating on the rest of days through election. I’ll probably post links to articles that have been on my brain the last week… but I have to admit the sheer volume depresses me…. it feels like there’s so much to be done, said, thought of, prayed about, and not enough time to do it…
If anything, one thing that I learned from this election is just how polarized Catholics really are. I naively thought that a cafeteria Catholic knew he/she was a cafeteria Catholic, you know? My concept of “cafeteria Catholic” before all the campaigning started was someone who went to Mass once or twice a year, didn’t see the importance of doing anything more than that, but readily would admit to not being as “good” a Catholic as one should be if one professes to be a Catholic anyway. Now I see how wrong I was. That I was flummoxed by this realization is probably the shocker. I’m still bewildered that anyone can say I’m *NOT* a Cafeteria Catholic, I’m a *DEVOUT* Catholic and yet I support all (or most of) the non-negotiables. It just doesn’t compute! But I’ll stop here.
And I’ll go do what I said what I would. Leave it all in God’s hands. And pray unceasingly. I invite you to do the same. God bless!!
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