We Were Never Going To Win<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I\u2019ve been dabbling away at some different writing projects. The following is a fragment from a pseudo memoir that isn\u2019t taking shape in the way I thought.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/preventingrace\/2018\/05\/16\/we-were-never-going-to-win\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We Were Never Going To Win\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019ve been dabbling away at some different writing projects. 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{"id":7634,"date":"2018-05-16T08:39:54","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T12:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/preventingrace\/?p=7634"},"modified":"2018-05-16T08:39:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-16T12:39:54","slug":"we-were-never-going-to-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/preventingrace\/2018\/05\/16\/we-were-never-going-to-win\/","title":{"rendered":"We Were Never Going To Win"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

Emma danced and twirled in a princess dress, one of those awful Target Disney items that tear easily but can never perish. She paused and then twirled her little sister. The boys were wearing Spiderman Costumes. I had just walked in and plunked my fat purse down on some chair piled high with junk that needed to be sorted and put away, somewhere. Except that there wasn\u2019t any somewhere left. For months we\u2019d been flinging stuff we didn\u2019t know what to do with into the basement. Once a dim comfortable bedroom with a proper bed and desk, now a cavern of discarded junk, the basement was a true testament of our belief that we would definitely lose.<\/p>\n

In 2003, sitting in a sunlit high brow Starbucks on the San Antonio River Walk, the computer open\u2013one of those old one\u2019s you have to lug around with you looking for an outlet and shoving an internet hot spot card into its various crevices, hitting refresh on Titusonenine over and over and over and over\u2013we saw the depressing, but completely expected, headline that Gene Robinson\u2019s election as bishop of New Hampshire had been ratified by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Clergy, Lay Delegates, Bishops. All the houses had accepted his election.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We drank another coffee and hit refresh. It was a beautiful day. We were alone. Little Emma was spending the week with her grandparents while we went away by ourselves to the Texas Hill Country. The trip into Starbucks satisfied a brief craving for civilization, and news. We had blown out a tire on the way in and Matt had grease all over his crisp blue shirt from lying on the side of the highway to force on the spare. The coffee was pretty good. We hit refresh again and then went back to the hill country.<\/p>\n

And from that moment on we were walking the way to this second moment, where I flung my purse down and plunked into a chair. Matt waved the white fluttering court order letting us know we had to get out of this house and out of this church as soon as we could do it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey can come take the keys if they want,\u201d said Matt, as I read it over. \u201cWe\u2019ve lost everything\u2013both buildings, all the money, everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

But not everything. We sat watching the children twirl. \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of stuff in the basement we won\u2019t be able to convince them to take,\u201d I said, or thought. When you lose \u2018everything\u2019 that just means you have to pack, because some of the things have to go with you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I fixed the children\u2019s twirling and laughing into the back of my mind\u2019s eye. I\u2019ll take that, I thought. That, I will keep. And I have. Because when you lose everything, it\u2019s just some of the things.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"