I Could Not Sleep

I had hoped to talk about the election results by now, but here we are.

I stayed up last night, not to watch the returns but to watch my friends react to the returns on Facebook. My friends are a lot wittier than news commentators. It felt less nerve-wracking that way. Then I started to panic, so I ignored the news feed and put together a jigsaw puzzle.

The pressure cooker started hissing when it should have finished pressurizing and begun a 36-minute cook. I went in to see what was wrong, and I found that the chicken I was trying to pressure cook for a late dinner was far too big. I swore at the chicken and poked it with tongs to try to make it fit, but it was no use. I had no appetite anyway. It went in the crockpot for breakfast.

Rosie got gluten-free spaghetti with Ragu for dinner.

As for me, I felt like my stomach was in the pressure cooker.

I got back on Facebook and saw my friends exclaiming; for a sickening moment, I thought it was all over. I thought it was the cold shock of 2016 all over again. Then Michael, who was sensibly watching the returns on reliable news sites, came up and told me it was far from over, just a lot closer than we’d hoped.

While I put together the puzzle, I tried to listen to a silly audiobook to take my mind off things. It was a collection of Dave Barry essays from the nineties, and it didn’t exactly help, since in the very first essay he quipped that the word ‘perspective’ came from two root words, ‘persp’ meaning ‘something bad that happens to someone else,’ and ‘ective’ meaning ‘preferably someone like Donald Trump.’

Donald Trump was always a punchline. Somewhere along the line, America became Donald Trump’s punchline.

I couldn’t lie down until well after three in the morning, when it was clear that we wouldn’t know that night. Rosie was having one of her sleepless times, so I went into her bedroom and knelt by the bedside to keep her company.

Four years ago on election night, she was in bed with me because she was scared of the dark. Now she’s a big girl and sleeps in her room.

I went to bed, but I barely slept. I stayed awake listening to my heart race and my stomach churn until after the sun came up.

I woke to find it still wasn’t over. Michael had dragged his computer over to his bedside to watch the returns, eat the hot crockpot chicken, and finish the e-book he was reading.

I went about my business, homeschooling and watching TV with Rosie. She wants me to watch the new Power Rangers series that just hit Netflix. I don’t exactly like it, but I enjoy watching Rosie enjoy a thing with such gusto. Then she watched Wild Kratts while I went for a walk.

LaBelle looks almost pleasant, with most of the Trump and Biden signs already pulled off people’s lawns. Only the diehard supporters still had signs up, very few of each.

I came back inside and did some more homeschooling. Then Rosie and I both went for a walk in the evening cool, to look at trees. She wanted pine cones and acorns to make bait for squirrels. We didn’t find any acorns, but we found pines and hemlock, sycamore and two kinds of maple, a male holly with vibrant red berries, a dogwood, a pear.

I dipped back into the internet now and then, getting a little more hopeful as time went by. We still don’t know, and I don’t know how long until we know. It could still go either way. But the cold panic has ebbed.

We made gluten free dinosaur chicken nuggets and French fries, my first meal in about 24 hours, and listened to a Hardy Boys mystery audiobook.

I got on the internet once more; my friends and I had an appointment to play Dungeons and Dragons in a private group. I saw that some conservative Catholics had set themselves to praying a prayer “binding demons,” to try to bring back Trump’s lead.

That seemed so odd to me.

Surely that’s not prayer but magic, trying to force a spirit to do your bidding.

I saw some other friends saying that they didn’t pray about election outcomes, and I know what they mean. The heavens are the Lord’s but the earth is given over to us. Governments are our business. It would be a form of idolatry to see any earthly political party as a savior who embodied God’s will. Nobody is on the side of the angels. When Holy Archangel Michael appeared to Joshua, Joshua asked if he was for them or for their enemies. Michael replied he was for neither, but commander of the army of the Lord.

Still, I did pray to Saint Michael, commander of the army of the Lord. I prayed to him silently last night when I was kneeling at Rose’s bedside. I prayed as someone who tries to be a servant of the Lord instead of a servant of the world, and also as a lonely woman who’s always viewed Saint Michael as a big sister.  I am very familiar with Saint Michael, when I tend to be nervous and formal with some other Heavenly friends.

I did ask him to look into things.

I told him that I knew that neither side of American politics was the party of God. I knew that the mess we got ourselves into was our business and ours to work out. Still, I insisted, in my fallible human estimation, I think that Biden would do a lot less harm to the poor, to the sick, to the migrant, yes, even to the unborn child. I think that if Trump is in power he will hurt the poor worse.  And I know that God hears the cry of the poor. And I knew that miracles do happen, once in a blue moon. So, if you wouldn’t mind asking God for a miracle for me?

I figured it wouldn’t hurt to pray to the good angels, not when so many people were clacking their Rosary beads to try to bind fallen angels to their bidding. Saint Michael was far enough above our nonsense to decide what to do with our battling petitions.

If Biden does win, I will not be so deluded as to think I caused it with my prayer. Still, I felt better.

I didn’t exactly feel fine.

But I did have the weird feeling that I was safe.

“Safe” in the eyes of Heaven isn’t always a kind of safe I like. The safety promised to the Christian is that the battle, in the end, will be the Lord’s. You will do what is yours to do, knowing that your spirit is safe in the Heart of Christ even as they tie you to the stake and light the fire. Nothing else is promised, but what’s promised is to be with Him in  paradise. That’s enough.

Meanwhile, we live and die as servants of God, on earth. We cook dinner and go for nature walks, put together puzzles, read and write silly books. We try to do the best we can to hear and attend to the cry of the poor, accepting that we could be wrong in our estimation of how to do it, trying to have mercy on people who seem far more wrong than we are. We repent whenever we find we’ve gone wrong and try to do better. We keep doing this until it kills us, and God will take care of everything else one way or another.

I wanted it to be over before last night. I wanted it to be over before tonight. But it’s not over yet.

Whatever happens, I’ve done all I can.

And that’s enough for tonight.

Tonight, I’m going to sleep.

Image via Pixabay.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross.

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