Things I’m Over

#1 The election

Look, Hillary is going to win the election and I’ve known this for a very long time. I had long decided that I didn’t care about this election because I have known in my bones that that was the case. But then Rubio entered and there I was all sucked up in the drama. I’ve been a Hispanic woman my entire life so the one thing that I have always known is that our election system is stacked against the individual voter, especially us poor ones. I think more people are beginning to see that this election, but it’s nothing new. The Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal and was written by white men who owned other human beings they didn’t consider to be equal, so yeah, our government has always had its own definition of “men” and “equal”. And the idea that America was based on Christianity is such a simplistic view of history that I wonder if people who believe that story have ever read about Benjamin Franklin or if they just put all their trust in memes on Facebook. I am not an educated person, I dropped out of school in the 10th grade and I’m barely passing my college classes, but even I know that the point of the American Government wasn’t to create a theocracy. So, I no longer care about this election. I’m over it. What will happen, will happen and God will use it for His will to be done and I can trust in that.

#2 (which seems fitting) Bathroom wars

I read Targets statement on their bathroom policy and decided that I’m over this debate. People will read/write/believe whatever they want and parrot the arguments of whatever talking head they adore. There is no taking a part of the discussion and making an argument from it, nope, it’s all muddled together and the insults being hurled are making me wonder how the hell we can ever survive as a nation. We can’t even discuss public bathrooms civilly now.

I am done with both of these debates. I have nothing more to add.

On Good Friday I watched The Passion and saw the chaos that surrounded our Lord during His betrayal, passion, and death for the first time. I mean, I’ve seen it before but this time I watched it thinking that there was something familiar about it. I watched people tear their robes, hurl insults at one another, flip the eff out and all the handwringing….. it all looked so familiar but I couldn’t really put my finger on it. Then as I prayed the Rosary led by my Tia as my Tio died, it hit me. That same chaos is engulfing us now.

As God saved us, the world was caught up in all kinds of debates, chaos, drama and politics but nobody was paying attention to what God was doing, except the three people who stood at the foot of the Cross: the Blessed Mother, John and Mary Magdalene. Everyone else was wrapped up in the distractions of the world, all of which seemed so damned important at the time, even as God died on a Cross for us.

A lot of Jesus’ disciples were in hiding fearing for their lives. They all knew what was supposed to happen, they all vowed that they loved Jesus, they all knew what He was capable of and some of them had even proclaimed to know that He was the Son of God and yet where were they? Hiding in fear, freaking out, wringing their hands.

That’s where a lot of us are at now. We have created an idol out of fear. Everyday we make new sacrifices to our fears which leads us to reduce every single argument into “what about me?” and “It’s us or them!”.  That is where all idolatry ends, isolating us inside ourselves, our opinions, our thoughts and making us think that we are more important than anyone or anything else and we end up hiding in fear, freaking out and wringing our hands. Love, compassion and mercy draw us out of ourselves.

Watching my Tio fight death to his last breath put some perspective in my life. There is no place for me in the chaos, mostly because nobody is listening but we are all speaking. My opinions only add the the noise. Nothing good or Holy comes from the chaos for me. Every time that I find myself swept up by it only leads me to dark places in my thoughts and in my words.

God is doing something big but are we paying attention? Or are we in the crowd that is caught up in the noise? I admit that I’ve been a huge part of the noise, not only in shouting my opinions but also in craving the back and forth among other bloggers, but after watching a man die for 6 days, let me say that none of this noise will matter when our time comes. I didn’t watch TV, pay attention to my newsfeed or timeline or read a blog post for 6 days. Instead, I talked to my dying Tio, prayed with my family, cried, talked to my cousin, sat by the beach crying because my Godmother gave me the silent treatment and buried a man who saved me from a house where I lived with my abuser. Nothing else mattered but begging God for His mercy for my Tio and the rest of us.

My Tio stood before God last Monday and I can guarantee that the last thing that came up was who can use what bathroom or the election. I have a lot of work to do in order to prepare for the day that I stand before Him that much I know.