We the People

I had hoped that the battle raging on social media would end when the election finished. Little did I know it was just the beginning.

My decision of who to vote for was one of the hardest decisions I've faced in a very long time. Both of the main candidates were deplorable, awful people and my moral center just couldn't handle having to vote for them. I liked the look of the third party candidates more, but I worried I would be throwing away my vote if I voted for them. The weeks leading up to the election were full of flip-flopping from one candidate to another until I decided what was the most important thing to me, and I voted accordingly.

I know of a woman who could not bring herself to vote for Trump because of her bad experiences with misogynistic men in her past, so she voted for Clinton despite not trusting her.

I know of another woman who loved Hillary and voted for her wholeheartedly.

I know of a woman who prayed about the decision, and felt prompted to vote for Trump.

I know a woman who despised both candidates and supported Evan McMullen through the whole last months of the election.

As for me, I decided to weigh my decision on the supreme court: Which political party better fits with my opinions and beliefs? I decided that, despite liking McMullen best, I would vote for Trump because he was the Republican candidate, and so would appoint Republican justices, who would rule in favor of decisions closer to what I believe.

I'd come to grips with my decision, felt good about it even, as the protests and #notmypresident and the constant barrage of anti-Trump articles filled my Facebook newsfeed. Then, I saw this on my feed because it was liked by one of my friends:



I know it wasn't meant for me personally, but it hurt me. All the other "people who voted for Trump are stupid" articles hadn't affected me at all, but this did. What I saw was blatant, unapologetic judgement on me as a person because of who I voted for. I must be a racist, I must hate handicapped people, I must be sexist and a bully if I voted for Donald Trump. Nevermind that I am a woman, that my all-time favorite job was working with handicapped adults, that I've never seen myself as better than anyone else because of skin color, and that I've worked my whole life to be kind to everyone. I must be awful because I voted for Trump.

This battle between the political parties needs to stop. I think Hillary is an evil woman, and yet I do not think less of anyone who voted for her. I think Trump is a tactless, horrible person, too, but a decision had to be made and I made it as best I could. We need to understand that each side had to concede something to be able to vote at all in this election. There was no "lesser of two evils"; it was just a matter of which evil, in your opinion, would do the most good in office. We do not need to attack those who voted differently from us. Everyone has different backgrounds, different experiences and different priorities which affected their vote. We cannot judge a person's vote because we do not know what motivated them to vote that way.

We are all children of God. We all are endowed with the same gift of agency, which includes the ability to choose who we vote for. Maybe it would have been easier to sit this election out, to call all the options bad and screw this, I'm not voting. But we didn't; we tried to be good citizens by participating in the decision that will affect the next four years of our nation. No one should be labeled as a bad person for doing that. Good for you for voting, no matter who you voted for.

If we are going to make sure that this nation is a good place to live in for the next four years, we need to start by loving each other. Clinton and Trump supporters must work together for this nation to run. The election is over, and I don't believe anyone is truly happy with the results, but now it's time to move forward.

The honest truth is that Trump doesn't determine our happiness, the quality of our friendships, or our degree of political participation: We do. It is still up to us, and with a touch more kindness than we have been having since the election, the world will improve, regardless of who our president is or what he does while in office. There are more of us than there is of him. We the people have the power to make this nation better.

The Most Important Things

This week has been an important week. Earth-shattering, life-changing, monumental in importance.

My son was born.

There was also a presidential election that seemed to shake the country and the world. Since that election both sides have still been battling. Attempts have been made to do everything from abolish the electoral college to ask the electors to vote contrary to their original commitments. There have been peaceful protests and full-out riots by both the disappointed Democrats and the celebrating Republicans. The news actually has something new and interesting every time you turn it on or log into Yahoo.

But that's small potatoes next to my baby.

We were not expecting baby Hyrum until the end of the month, but I went into because he didn't seem to be kicking as much as usual. A fetal nonstress test showed the baby inside me was less reactive than usual, and taking in other health factors they decided he needed to come today. I was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Salt Lake City, where it didn't take too long to get me prepped and into the O.R. for an emergency C-section.

I was awake for the operation, though completely numbed from the chest down. My husband was able to watch them pull our son from my abdomen, but the curtain he was looking over blocked my view of the baby (though I know it was overall a good thing, because Hunter says there was a lot of blood). After they stitched and stapled me up I was brought to a private room to recover. Our mothers stayed for an hour or so, but by then it was past midnight and the baby was still being treated in the Newborn ICU so we couldn't go see him. Hunter and I waited in the recovery room, til finally at 2 am we got word that the NICU was reopened and we could see our son on our way to my postpartum recovery room where I would spend the next four days.

The NICU is not that large, but the wonderful nurses wheeled my hospital bed in between the incubators until we reached where my little Hyrum lay. He was all wrapped up in a blanket, oxygen in his nose, a feeding tube down his throat and an I.V. in his scalp. It broke my heart to not be able to hold him, but reached out and touched his hand as Hunter placed a hand on his chest and whispered our love in his ears. It was only a few minutes, then I was whisked away to be seen by a nurse and given pain pills before we both tried to sleep. 

Once I got feeling back to my legs I was able to get in a wheelchair and make a trip to the NICU again. Hunter had already spent multiple hours watching over our son, but I wasn't able to move fully until the next afternoon. My wheelchair sat lower than his incubator, so I reached my hand up and grabbed his hand again, or gently stroked his dark hair. I was able to stay about half an hour before my pain and exhaustion brought me back to my room and into bed.

The next three days were the same, but with increasing strength and less wheelchair use. There was a taller chair the nurse would pull up by Hyrum so I could see him and place my hand on his chest. We couldn't hold him until the evening of the second day because of a central line in his umbilical cord that they were worried about. After that first time holding him, we held him as much as we could.

Finally, on the day I was discharged from the hospital, they moved Hyrum from the first high-intensity room to a quieter room. His lungs and pancreas were improving, and as they did more and more tests it looked less and less like there was actually an issue with his heart. They told us that he should be in the NICU only between one and two weeks, and every single nurse told us how cute our son is.

This week has seemed like the end of the world. Trump was elected president, Hillary Clinton supporters took to the streets, and the entire country seemed in uproar. In the midst of all that, my husband and I sat in a hospital room, having just left our baby in the NICU so I could sleep because i was still recovering from major surgery. He held me as I cried, mourning the fact that I could only hold my baby when the nurses let me, and when he cried it was a nurse who made him feel better and not me, his mommy. We have watched our four-day-old son have his heel pricked every six hours, have had to stop him as he found his oxygen tube and tried to pull it away from his face with his tiny hands, and have left the room as they replaced yet another tube or took another test.

The future of our country is important. Who is president is important and will affect me. The relationship between the Democrats and Republicans is also important. But what is most important is not in Washington, D.C. for me. I could care less who was elected and whether the rioters tear each other apart right now because I have a family to care for. I have a son who, while he is not fighting for his life, he is working harder than most babies to learn how to live and breathe on his own. I am learning how to be a mother at my sons bedside instead of with him in my arms. I am pumping instead of breastfeeding. My husband is working from the hospital, supporting me and our son while still trying to make money to pay for our NICU bills. These are my realities, much more real and much more important than any election. This is the beginning of my family, and while it is hard I can see the amazing blessings that come every single day. And more than anything, I have discovered that family is indeed the most important thing in life. My son, being here for him even though he cannot even focus his eyes on my face yet, that is the most important thing.

I hope we all can see that there are more important things than this election. I hope it is smaller than a baby in the NICU, but I also pray you see it. Date night with your spouse, a pizza party with your friends, a sibling who is having a really hard day--all those things trump Trump and Hillary and politics and riots and anything else. Our relationships are the things that will bring us joy forever, and they are the things that mean the most today, if we are willing to give them the proper amount of attention.

What Now?

Well, we survived it: The craziest election in American history. When I woke up this morning my house, my husband and my baby were still mine, my driver's  license was still valid and the nation hadn't yet spontaneously combusted. I'd call that a good beginning to any Wednesday, much less the one after a very hotly contested and extremely controversial election.

Congratulations Mr. Trump; you did what no one I talked to believed you would. Now we hope that you will use your office to improve and bless the nation rather than to use it for your own gain.

But really, what power do we have over that? What Trump decides to do in office has nothing to do with what we decide to do while he his in office. The reason we have three branches of government is to ensure that the President can't push the "self-destruct" button on the nation during his four-year tenure. So what really makes the difference?

We do.

It's true that the President of the United States has power to veto laws, write executive orders and be the face of our nation to the world. But who really decides what kind of land we are living in?

We do.

The hate, mud-slinging, dirt-digging, blowing everything out of proportion, and constant fighting has been going on long enough. This election has left everyone frustrated, sad, and covered  in muck. The time has now come to stand up, clean ourselves off, and to make our nation exactly what we wanted to make it when we cast our ballot. The truth is, though, that every day we make much more of a difference than we did on election day.

People voted for Evan McMullen to support religious freedom. We can support religious freedom every day by helping Muslim refugees, being kind to Mormon or Jehovah's Witness missionaries we meet on the street, and living our religious beliefs in such a way that we bless those around us.

People voted for Hillary Clinton to support the rights of the LGBT community. We can support the LGBT community every day by being kind to everyone before we know anything about their sexual orientation, by using kind words and avoiding slurs, and by remembering that everyone is a child of God.

People voted for Donald Trump to feel that they have a voice in government again. We can express our voice every day by obeying the law and supporting law enforcement, by keeping up to date on the issues in the nation and the world, and by finding ways to be active in the community, such as by volunteering at a shelter or sending out hygiene kits to countries in need.

Neither candidate was ideal. I talked with so many people who just couldn't decide who to vote for, because no matter who took the White House there would be problems, internal moral battles for the voters, and the external battles for everything else. We all voted for someone that either we or our friends think is evil. That does not make us or our friends evil. The only time there is one right answer in an election is when it is Jesus here to reign on earth, and that isn't happening for a while. We can feel so strongly that our candidate is the only right choice, but the truth is that the other side can feel the same way, too. There are pros and cons to every choice, and so we must not feel that those who did not vote our same way are stupid, hateful, or as evil as the person they voted for. They had their reasons, as did you. They may not have liked it, but they weighed their options and did what they felt was best, exercising their right to have some sort of say, no matter how small.

Differences in opinion are essential to having a productive community. The ideal situation is the two opposing ideas come together and meet in the middle, reaching a consensus that best benefits the most people. That doesn't happen as often as we might hope, but it shows that opposing views make change possible.

Now, I would like to take a moment to talk about my son. He will only be four years old when Donald Trump's term ends, so this election will not mean much to him. But as I think about what my son can learn from Trump, I did come up with some answers.

My son will not be looking to Trump as an example for how to treat women. He will be looking at his father and grandfathers. I can have a man who has said awful things (most of which I won't even read because I know how disturbing they will be) in the White House and have my son grow up to be a gentleman who opens doors for his sisters and proffers his arm to the girls at EFY. I can have a man who seems to have no filter when he speaks in the White House and still have my son learn to say kind words, to think before he speaks, and to be respectful to everyone.

Instead, my son will learn about the democratic process from Trump. He will learn how the electoral college works, explaining how Trump got voted in in the first place. He will learn why the Founding Fathers set up our country as they did, rotating our president out every four years and allowing the people to have a say in who gets in next. He will learn how the executive branch is only one branch of government, and how the legislative and judicial work together with the president to create the most balanced government we can. It's not much, but that is what my son can learn. from President Donald Trump.

As we continue on with our daily lives, seemingly unaffected by the election that took up so much of our time and effort and thoughts this week, we need to remember that there is only one president and there are 320 million of us. If anyone is really going to make a difference, it's not the president. It's each of the 320 million who strives to share goodness, to give hope and service, to be kind and caring regardless of any differences in opinion, and who stands for what they believe so that all of us with opposing ideas can stand together as cooperating and kind Americans.

God loves everyone. God loves Hillary Clinton; God loves Donald Trump. God loves and blesses this nation, and if we do our best to make it a good place full of the love of God, it doesn't matter who is in the White House. No single person can tear down this nation if we are working our best to make it better every day.