Faith, Hope and the Election

by Tracy Johnson

In the dark I sit on my brown sofa. My coffee is poured into a cup I recently purchased from Target with the word “gratitude” etched on it. The house is quiet, my two children still at home are sleeping along with my husband. I can hear the live oaks in my yard gently moving in the wind. I feel ragged, worn and despite the eight hours of sleep I got last night I am tired.

I have a dull headache that feels a bit like a hangover, I suspect it is the lingering impact from a day filled with tension due largely to conversations via phone and text with several members of my family all tied to the election. To put it simply, we are not all on the same page.

Despite our right and responsibility to vote I think individually we feel like we are on a freight train barreling down the tracks to an unwanted destination no one chose. It makes me angry.

Layers of fear and anger, multi-faceted and flowing from feelings of powerlessness leave the edges of my heart and soul tattered, like a flag that has been left exposed too long, pummeled by wind and weather. News outlets, social media feeds, pointed conversations with friends that rarely leave me hopeful, connected, or sensing that I truly I belong anywhere or with anyone. Hope feels hard to come by right now. 

In the quiet I try to breathe in and out slowly. 

When I sit with clients, I am mindful of their breathing, and I ask them to be mindful about it too. I believe the Spirit of God lives in us, the Hebrew word for Spirit is ruwach – translated as breath. I also believe evil wants to take that breath, our breath, away. How many times have we been aware, likely fearful, of the disease and violence that is literally taking away people’s ability to breathe right now? 

We do not want to be powerless over our ability to breathe. 

I believe the collective national trauma response to our current reality has largely been to fight. We fight with our words, with our re-posting, with our money, and with our personal acts of defiance. As a nation we feel it is our God given right to fight for our personal rights, life-liberty-the pursuit of happiness, according to the Declaration of Independence.

So, here we are, fighting one another.

The political rhetoric between Present Trump and Joe Biden affirms where we find ourselves. Books and articles have been written and campaign slogans crafted that they are each “fighting for the soul of America”. I think this rhetoric has landed deeply inside people of faith, emboldening their fight response to the fear and trauma. Many have taken on that this “fight” is for America’s soul, making the results from this election somehow tied to our faith and spirituality. Hope is linked with whatever outcome is believed to be most God honoring, and likely to save America’s soul.

I can say with confidence our hope and faith should not be placed in the results of the election, or in either of the candidates bringing our nation back to a place of health and wholeness. 

So, what do we do? Where do we find hope and how do we live with faith right now? 

Several years ago, I found myself in circumstances that were suffocating my heart and soul, I felt desperate, powerless and at the end of my rope. I began a practice of getting down on the floor in yoga child’s pose and slowly breathing Jesus, please. Breathing in Jesus, exhaling please. Sometimes just for a minute or two, sometimes for ten minutes. Slowly in and out, until I felt like I was in my body and could sense the Spirit of God with me, in me.

Faith is deepened when we experience the presence the God, when we have the felt sense that as God has been in the past, so He is now. Faith wanes when we feel God is absent, far away, 

unreachable and untouchable; if we believe He has forgotten us, or is disinterested, uncaring, unmoved. And Faith is designed to be embodied. This is why evil wants to take our breath away, creating a sense that we have been betrayed by God, that He has not come through for us, that He is not with us. When we experience the felt presence of God, in our bodies, through something as simple as breathing our faith is deepened.

Jesus, please. Breathing in Jesus, exhaling please.

Right now, it is taking a lot of faith, a lot of the felt presence of God, for me to continue to risk hoping. Dr. Dan Allender has said, “Hope is faith for the future.”

Hope for me is to risk making choices rooted in my faith, who I have known God to be and how I have come to know Him personally and revealed in scripture.

The context God has given me for my life doesn’t place me in relationships with politicians or lobbyists, that is not my realm. I need to attend to what is in front me, what is mine to care for and manage. Hope looks like investing in my real relationships, not being swallowed by social media and my connections there.

It is remembering who my people are, how they came to be trusted, and risking belief that we can find our way back to one another despite our differing opinions; it’s being willing to take the first step to rebuild trust if it’s been broken in this challenging season. It is waking up again and doing the next thing before me to attune to and care for the people I encounter each day in my work and ministry, especially those who are different than me.

Hope is not holding my breath, or choosing isolation and self-protection.

I believe faith and hope walked out right now look like consistent daily choices, to breath, to remember who God has been and is today, and to risk reaching out to maintain and rebuild relationships with one another. Our conversations must shift to how we can care for one another’s needs and fears, honor one another’s dignity and preferences and find our common ground again.

— Tracy Johnson

Bio

Tracy Johnson holds a lifetime of learning and transformation that has come from the engagement of her own story coupled with three decades of ministry to men and women of all ages. She has a certificate in trauma focused narrative therapy through The Allender Center at The Seattle School of Psychology and Theology. Founder of Red Tent Living Magazine she has invited women around the world to share their stories for the sake of collaboratively reframing femininity. Tracy is a spiritual counselor at Restoration Counseling where it is her joy to sit with clients taking a deeper journey into their stories to experience spiritual transformation. She and Mark have been married for thirty three years and have five children. She loves her home in the hill country of Texas, the sound of water moving across rocks, good coffee, deeply dark chocolate and wine shared over conversations on her back porch.