Election Day Part II - Reach Deep Inside for Love

My sisters…..November 2016 is almost done. It has been quite a month for me. It has really only been three weeks. But it seems like a lot longer. And today as I search my heart to put into words all the emotions that have overwhelmed me over the past 20 days, I find the need to “Reach Deep Inside for Love”.

On November 8th history was made, and I watched, horrified as it was unfolding. My husband just went to bed. I couldn’t do it. I was glued to the television watching and praying. The final outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election was not at all what I expected. It was not what I hoped for. It was not what I prayed for. Yet it has become our reality. And lest I offend anyone reading this, let me say that my feelings of horror and shock and sadness and anxiety was not in direct response to the candidate who became our President-Elect, but the unbelievable movement of hatred, anger and meanness that ultimately fueled the fire of his campaign and eventually gave him the job that I wasn’t even sure he really wanted.

I learned today that the word “xenophobia” was the most looked up word of the year on Dictionary.com which hit a peak during the month of June. Are you familiar with this word? Please allow me to share, just in case. It is defined as: fear or hatred of people from different cultures who have different customs, dress, and backgrounds than your own. This word was used quite a bit during the past months to describe the actions of the movement which became the Trump campaign. Other words used quite often were racism, nationalism, homophobia, and sexism. All of these words can be summed up with one word… “otherness”, which means if you don’t look like me, walk like me, talk like me, live like me, then you are a foreigner and we are TAKING OUR COUNTRY BACK FROM YOU! Every time I heard the phrase “take our country back” or “make America great again” I was offended and sickened.

I am an intelligent woman. I know that not everyone who supported that ticket feels this way. But it feels like they do. I saw the rallies. I watched the news. I saw the violence. I heard the meanness. No one and nothing was off limits. Not even the handicapped or the Pope! How can this be so in the year Two-thousand and sixteen? How can a person embrace a part of this movement and this man without embracing the whole of it and him? It feels like HATE has won. That has been my struggle for the past twenty days. I find myself feeling differently. I find myself being angry. I find myself looking at people in my community who outnumber me and wondering what they are thinking about me. I find myself not liking my surroundings at work because of people who I know supported what I can only see as evil. And herein is my problem.

No matter what happened on November 8th, and no matter what happens after January 20th, 2017…no matter how many hateful people he fills his cabinet with, no matter what they do in their given assignments, I MUST NEVER STOP BEING WHO I AM. I must not allow myself to become bitter and angry and judgmental because of what may or may not happen under his leadership. I am reaching deep inside for love. For it is LOVE that made me, it is LOVE that sustains me, it is LOVE that watches over me, it is LOVE that provides for me, it is LOVE that protects me, it is LOVE that causes me to rise above everyone and everything that is the opposite of LOVE.

Prayerfully, as we move forward my beautiful, strong, and powerful sisters; let us walk in LOVE. Love is GOD and GOD is Love. Love is all we need. LOVE trumps HATE! We are strengthening our black females out of LOVE.