Morning-After Tears

Actually, I didn't cry this morning. It was last night, and it wasn't because Barack Obama won the presidency, although so much emotion has gone into this election that simple decompression would probably have been enough to set me off.

It is truly great that an African-American made it to the White House, and I am glad that no one has today accused me of racism for voting my conscience, as they almost certainly would have done had McCain won. It's long about time that someone non-Caucasian had the honor, and I'm proud of my country for coming so far from the days of segregation (not to mention slavery). It is good to see a 'black' man win the presidency. I just wish it was someone more like Alan Keyes.

I voted for McCain/Palin; I'm not tempted to apologize for this. Though I have many friends who voted for Chuck Baldwin, all of whom had excellent reasons for doing so, I voted to the best of my conscience and did so for the sake of several issues; one in particular, for I hardly think we'll get much else straight until we've resolved it. I voted for the candidate who appeared to me most likely to reduce abortion in this country. Likelihood of getting elected was part of that decision.

I hear that his concession speech was truly gracious. Even the http://www.telegraph.co.uk couldn't find fault with it, although in typical fashion they found ways to take cheap shots at his supporters. His sense of honor reminds me of mine, which is easy to forget at memories of things said and done by some Obama supporters, arrogant young poets of the usual West Coast persuasions, etc.

It was the passing of I-1000 that had me sobbing in bed at midnight last night. The initiative authorizes assisted suicide by means of lethal drug overdose. Having sung in homes for the elderly and looked at their faces, having seen my grandma living at my parents' and dealing at times with terrible pain, having considered the possibility of someday needing to care for my husband, my parents, my in-laws, I feel the immense value of these people—the importance of every hour of the lives granted them—their irreplaceability. It horrifies me to imagine that human beings voted for a law that might make any of these people feel pressured to take themselves off my hands.

Sure, it might not be intended to do such—but it will—oh yes, it will apply that pressure to people. And the rules will be mishandled, and the secrecy of the whole thing will obscure from public eye what really goes on, and corrupt courts will make the same sort of ruling that happened in Terri Schiavo's case. Dear God, have mercy.

Add to that the promise President-elect Obama made to sign the Freedom of Choice act—a misnomer if ever there was one—and the thought of so many innocents prepared to lose their lives, and you have the reasons why some of us mourned as ecstatic young idealists shot fireworks off in the Bellingham streets at midnight.

But maybe I'll have to go look up The Ballad of the White Horse, as "Anonymouse" suggested in the comments on the post that encouraged me most today. It's time to dry my tears and live up to the truth of the matter. Here is a piece of that truth (as quoted by Anonymouse) in two short lines, reminding me that battles are lost now and again, but that good ultimately triumphs over evil:

"Men of the east may spell the stars and times and triumphs mark, but men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark."