Month: March 2016

Tomorrow Will Be Better

Today was a bad day.

We were all tired–the combination of incessant coughing, middle-of-the-night-toddler-wakings, and endless wintery blahs are getting the best of us, I guess.

Felicity napped for just 20 minutes.

After school, the big kids started arguing approximately 2.7 seconds after they entered the same airspace.

I yelled at them. Meredith cried. Mother of the Year, right here.

Daddy is working the late shift this week, and I’m feeling sorry for myself, so I drove through McDonald’s for dinner.

Felicity splashed water out of the tub and I lost my temper. When I got her out, she ran away from me, and not 10 seconds later, tinkled on the kitchen bench cushion. That’s not to mention the permanent marker toddler artwork discovered on my couch cushion.

I let them all play iPad tonight much longer than any pediatrician would recommend, just to give myself a few minutes of silence and solitude.

I ate a piece of stale leftover chocolate birthday cake for dinner.

The kids got toast, cheese, and water for a bedtime snack, like some sort of second-rate prison ration.

Nolan cried because I brushed his teeth with the wrong toothpaste, and Felicity pushed him off his stool.

It was not a good day.

But, when we finally came to an agreement on which books to read before bed, they snuggled in–and forgave it all. We talked about visiting Mount Rushmore this spring, looked up pictures of what it looks like and discussed Abraham Lincoln. Meredith recalled he was shot, and Nolan piped up, “Just like Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton.”

They make me smile, even on bad days.

They don’t hold my failures against me. Their capacity to forgive my shortcomings and forget my lousy moments is more than I’ve earned.

We parents spend our time stringing together a bunch of failures mixed in with some victories–and that’s OK. We’re human. We’re imperfect. We’re in constant need of grace.

These three little faces reminded me tonight that I can’t do it on my own. That despite the bad moments, the rotten days, the McDonald’s drive-thru dinners, mercy is there if we’ll only slow down, take a deep breath, and accept that which we do not deserve.

Today was a bad day.
Tomorrow will be better.

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Never Trump

I am a conservative.

I revere the principles fought for and set forth by our Founding Fathers. I wish life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be chief among inalienable rights for all. I view the Constitution as a principled, comprehensive blueprint filled with wisdom, justice, equality, and freedom.

It’s why I cannont—now or ever—support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

The Republican Party has long been the home for conservative values. Limiting the powers of the federal government, championing the system of free enterprise, and steadfastly maintaining strong moral values are cornerstones of the ideology.

But should the rise of Donald Trump in his winning the party’s nomination, the GOP will no longer be fit to carry the banner for conservatism.

Donald Trump represents none of the things I stand for.

He is a populist, changing his opinions over the years seemingly based on his moods or the company he keeps.

He is a racist, who failed to disavow the enthusiastic support of the Ku Klux Klan, one of the most vile and repugnant organizations in human history.

He is a self-absorbed con-man whose priority is not America—but his own self. He values his own wealth, his own image, his own delusions of power above all else.

He is arrogant. He is offensive. He is irreverant. He is unwise.

He is dangerous.

He would be made even more dangerous if given the most powerful office in America.

If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, I will no longer identify with the Republican Party. Principles, as they say, come before party—and Donald Trump’s candidacy draws a sharp line in the sand as to who holds to that notion and who does not.

I support Marco Rubio (and sincerely hope anyone reading this will do the same) for his steadfast defense of the kind of conservatism Lincoln and Reagan stood for, the kind that should, and still could prevail.

George Washington’s warning puts the divide before us into sharp focus:

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.
                   – George Washington Farewell Address
                     September 19, 1796

Indeed, we face “the ruins of public liberty”—and most certainly the ruins of conservatism—if we allow Donald Trump anywhere near the  GOP nomination for President of the United States.

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