The closer we got to election day the more I couldn’t help wondering how we ended up here.  We had good options early in the race and these two are what we ended up with.  As election day progressed I began to feel a little sick to my stomach at the thought of voting for either candidate. 

Honestly, Clinton never would have had my vote because she is too thorough a representation of everything I don’t like about the liberal agenda.  But, Trump’s inability to be constructive and professional when put on the spot doesn’t fill me with confidence.  I’m also concerned that he was just playing a part.  I think he saw how fed up the American people were and that’s what he spoke to, he had nothing to lose and it worked.  Now time will tell us what the man is really made of.

We all know people who have taken a strong stance for one candidate or the other but most people I have talked to feel pretty much the same way I did.  They describe something like a scale, and for most of them it wasn’t the positive attributes (because they didn’t feel that either had many to compare) that were tipping the scale to one side or the other but the negative.  Which negatives am I most willing to put in the white house for at least the next 4 years. 

Please forgive me if I sound defeated or whiney.  These terms certainly don’t describe how I feel.  I just want to point out that while everyone is being lumped into one of two camps, I’m not sure that most people belong in either.  I think the sooner we realize this the sooner this will cease to be so divisive an issue.

So, when I get home after voting the first thing I hear on the news is how shocking it is that Trump is doing so well, this was not supposed to happen!  What’s more shocking is the demographics in which he is exceeding expected levels of performance, most shocking of all, so called “college educated white women” are favoring Trump!  It got me to thinking about all the categories we’ve been broken into for the purpose of understanding who we are and what’s important to us.  That got me to wondering who is really responsible for the division we see in our country.  Who named and defined these categories that we’ve been divided up into?  Since the majority of the white female population is not college educated what other categories have they been split up into and what significance does the descriptive “college educated” hold?  Is it meant to imply a higher level of intelligence?  An intelligent woman would never vote for Trump?  Hmmm.  I wonder where all this divisiveness that we’re have such a hard time healing in our nation comes from?

 Here’s something I’ve noticed.  College doesn’t create intelligence.  Higher education is very important, but it doesn’t make you intelligent.  I was fortunate enough to work for a company that allowed me to work my way from the floor into management.  In the years that I spent in management and leadership positions I interacted with many people who were college educated.  Some of these people thought they were smart because they went to college and seemed to think that a degree entitled them to one opportunity or another with no need to demonstrate ability or aptitude.  We’ve all encountered these lovely people I’m sure.  Others, on the other hand, went to college because they are life-long learners who carried intelligence into their college experience.  They understood what a college degree could do, professionally, for an intelligent individual with a strong work ethic.  They see every encounter as an opportunity to learn something new.  They might learn a more effective way to accomplish a task.  They might gain a new perspective or philosophy on life.  What they didn’t do is fall into the dangerous habit of assuming someone had less to offer because of where they came from or their level of education.  Intelligence is more an indication of life experience and how you’ve allowed that experience to impact you, your relationships and your interaction with people.

So, if “college educated” can’t be necessarily taken to indicate intelligence what could we mean by it that would create such shock when people in this demographic would vote for Trump rather than Clinton?  Maybe what we mean by it is that these people have had formal exposure to a specific agenda and with such exposure surely they would tend to vote as liberal as possible.  Maybe if the idea we intend convey with this descriptive is intelligence then intelligent women were insulted by the plea to “help make history” by voting a woman into office.  Maybe the thought that an intelligent woman would vote for a woman just because she is a woman was just a little bit insulting.  Maybe intelligent women got a little concerned about Clinton’s motives when she asked the question “Don’t you want a woman president?”.  Maybe intelligent women just want the right person for the job and when that person happens to be a woman they’ll gladly put her in office.

Then there was the suggestion early in election day that it must be the uneducated male that was to blame for his success.  Here is the last thing I will say about how indicative the presumed level of intelligence in a given demographic should be of the outcome of an election.  Regardless of race or religion the majority of the men and women that built this great country (because it has been built by it’s citizens) were life-long learners, not college educated.

We had turned the TV off by about 7:30 the evening of election day.  We decided to just be surprised in the morning.  Very much surprised we were.  My first thought was what an interesting country we live in and I didn’t give it much more thought.  Then, as the day progressed, I found out that the world had actually ended.  We had, in the course of about 12 hours, been thrust back into the dark ages from what I was hearing.  Picketing, rioting, demonstrations, “cry ins”………..pathetic.  The cry ins really puzzled me.  Let’s get together and hug and cry about the results of this election.  Who has this idea?  They made more sense to me in light of a recent experience Melissa had while getting our son his learners permit.  There was a teenager peering into the contraption to check his eyesight.  He read the first line then moved away.  The officer told him that he had missed a line.  He argued that he had not and the officer pointed out that, yes, there was another line that he needed to try to read.  Then his MOTHER jumps to her sons defense and points out that if he says that there isn’t another line then there probably isn’t one.  Once the officer convinces them that there is for sure another line the teen says “well I have a headache, I shouldn’t have to do this with a headache”.  I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse that these kinds of things just don’t happen to me.  At this same visit a girl failed the test.  Her FATHER argued with the officer about it.  Yes, I suppose I can see why some people are having cry ins.  They lost and didn’t even get a trophy to show for it.  Meanwhile the world is watching and learning how weak and childish this next generation is.   I didn’t vote for Obama.  I didn’t share his values and I didn’t like the way we approached the problems we had at the time under his leadership.  I accepted it and moved on.  I think he had some bad policies but we’re still here, and it should take more than Trump to bring us down.  Let’s get over it and move on.  The worst that might happen is Trump will gain some humility.  Here's what I think about how bad this is.  It is as bad as we allow it to be as the American people.  The media has been used (censored) around the world from time to time to shape what the people felt about the state of their country or economy.  Media was used during WWII to produce a positive message to help unify the country with a sense of duty.  Media was censored so that the level of severity was not always communicated accurately.  There was a positive spin so support stayed high and people would continue to make the sacrifices needed to make it to victory.  Do we need the media to convince us that things will be okay now?  Can’t we just accept the situation and move forward?  Can we stop trying to pick fights with each other and just go to work every day and raise our kids to love and care for the person next to them?  Can’t we do all of this on our own without the influence of the media?  The media seems bent on encouraging the divisiveness, it makes good news after all.  Wouldn’t that make them the enemy?  What a poison in our nation that we give the power to instigate the news rather than just report it.  They would have us, and the world, believe that these people standing in groups hugging and crying represent the majority when they are such a small minority.   

Then there’s the racism issue.  A couple of weeks ago I was unloading a truck at work.  The driver was very friendly, approachable and outgoing.  We hit it off pretty quick.  We used the few minutes to talk about a range of topics.  The subject matter turned to a business that has been doing very well in the area.  It happened that he knew the guys that owned this business and went on to say “they’re black and we go golfing together sometimes”.  This left me wondering why that information was important.  Was it important to him that I knew he golfed with black men or was it important to him that I knew that the owners of the business are black?  If I didn’t give you any more information about this interaction what would you assume about this man?  Do you jump to the conclusion that this driver was a racist white man who wanted me to know how honorable he is for golfing with some black guys?  Or was it a black man who thought it was important to make sure that this white guy knew that some black men were successful in this area?  Well, the driver was black, and what his motivation was for pointing this out to me was is anybody’s guess.  He may not even know.  Many of you reading this may be very quick to say that since I am white that I assumed the people running the business were white.  (A quick thought, would I be more racist than him for assuming they were white or was he more racist for assuming I cared either way?  How about we stop jumping to the conclusion that racism has anything to do with it.)  You may be right, if for some reason the irrelevant question had ever been posed, maybe I assumed they were white.  Maybe I didn’t care, just like I never gave any thought to this driver being black until he thought it was important.  What color did you assume the driver was and what does that say about you?  It probably says nothing about you, or maybe it says a lot.  Do some soul searching if you’re not sure which.  This experience did leave me a little confused about the significance I’m supposed to put on race.  Every time I meet someone of a different color should I be sure to point it out and let them know how cool I am with that?  Because what I’ve been shooting for is to respect everyone enough to realize that we are all part of one big diverse race.  Maybe I’m not committed enough to breaking down racial barriers because I don’t continually bombard people with memes that point out how racist they are or how much further I’ve come in this regard than other white Christian folk.  Can anyone in this country say that they have never been impacted in a positive way by someone of a different color?  How many of us put any effort whatsoever into trying to interact only with people that look like us?  I know racism still occurs.  Please don’t think that I am trying to downplay this fact.  What I find disturbing is the unfounded use of this issue to put a wedge where there need not be one.   

Then there’s the question everyone keeps asking.  “How did this happen”?  First, let me remind the voices of the media to be cautious in their efforts to answer this question.  It was, after all, a large majority of the country that made this happen.  Stop poking fun at our country’s collective intelligence and accept that maybe this is a very loud statement about how the people feel about the direction the country has been moving in.  When the people use votes, just as they should, to make their will clear and judges are used by the minority to impose their will on the majority then our process isn’t working the way it’s supposed to.  Maybe this happened because the people want to know that they can get someone into Washington that isn’t owned by a special interest group.  The smartest thing Trump may have done in his entire campaign may have been to share his opinion that the whole thing is rigged.  This probably resonated with millions of fed up Americans.  What this outcome should tell us is that the majority of Americans have lost faith in the career politicians that are supposed to be representing them.  This election tells us far more about our media and the leaders of our country than it does about the American people.  Hopefully they get the message.   

Only a Dad. The real super heros.

The following poem has had a big impact on me over the last couple of years.  It helps me stop and really think about my actions, the guarded and the unguarded ones.  Am I the kind of dad that my kids look up to because they’re too young to understand how hypocritical and hateful I am?  Or, am I the kind of dad that my kids will appreciate most after they have begun to experience life a bit?

What about my wife?  Does she dread the time of day that I come home because she knows she’s going to have to shoulder some of the weight of the junk I’ve been dealing with all day?  Does she feel that she is a better woman having been close to me for so long?  Am I critical and overbearing or positive and uplifting? 

 

Honestly, I’ve been all over the spectrum from bad to good.  I don’t beat myself up about it, but, I know that if I don’t ask myself these questions regularly then the best impact I can hope to have on my family will be mediocre at best.  If I’m going to be a great husband and dad I have to do it on purpose, it won’t just happen.  Men will put so much effort into being great at so many things but how many of us put everything we’ve got into being the best husband or dad?  I know I don’t.  Sometimes it feels like I’ve just woke up from a long sleep and it occurs to me that I haven’t been doing as good as I’d like.

 

I’ll leave the poem uninterrupted first so you can enjoy it then I will add my thoughts to it below.  This poem is awesome, I don't hope to add any profundity to it.  This is how I use it from time to time to help hold myself accountable to the man I want to be and to try to stay in tune with the man God wants me to be.  My comments are only added to help others, if they need it, to not only read the poem but to let it speak to them.  I hope it is half the blessing to you that it has been to me. 

 

Only a Dad

poem

By Edgar Albert Guest

Only a dad, with a tired face,

Coming home from the daily race,

Bringing little of gold or fame,

To show how well he has played the game,

But glad in his heart that his own rejoice

To see him come, and to hear his voice.

 

Only a dad, with a brood of four,

One of ten million men or more.

Plodding along in the daily strife,

Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,

With never a whimper of pain or hate,

For the sake of those who at home await.

 

Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,

Merely one of the surging crowd

Toiling, striving from day to day,

Facing whatever may come his way,

Silent, whenever the harsh condemn,

And bearing it all for the love of them.

 

Only a dad, but he gives his all

To smooth the way for his children small,

Doing, with courage stern and grim,

The deeds that his father did for him.

This is the line that for him I pen,

Only a dad, but the best of men.

 

 

Only a Dad

By Edgar Albert Guest

Only a dad, with a tired face,

Coming home from the daily race,

Bringing little of gold or fame,

To show how well he has played the game,

But glad in his heart that his own rejoice

To see him come, and to hear his voice.

(We are all tired.  Crap happens at work.  Sometimes it’s out-right confrontation or conflict.  Sometimes knowing the burdens of co-workers or of people that report to you can be quite a weight to carry, do you carry that weight on your face? Is the gladness in your heart able to shine through the tiredness on your face?  After a long day at work do you come home and heap the stress of the day on your family, or is your family the high point of your day?  From the book “Happiness Homemade”, “They [husbands] frequently come to their homes with clouded brows, bringing no sunshine to the family circle.”          “The husband and father who is morose, selfish, and overbearing is not only unhappy himself, but he casts gloom upon all the inmates of his home.  He will reap the result in seeing his wife dispirited and sickly and his children marred with his own unlovely temper”    Maybe you’ve gotten caught up in trying to provide a better life for your family and in the process have forgotten how to drop everything else and let your face show them the joy that they bring to your heart.  You may not need to quit your job but you do need to remember how to let that joy out.  I used to come home and talk about my frustrations with the guys at work and how much I hated my job.  My job is challenging and can be very frustrating, but, it takes very good care of my family.  I’m in the job because I haven’t decided to do something else.  What insinuations do I make to my family with my complaints about work?  Whether I knew it or not, I was making it clear to them that they were a burden.  I never said it, but it would have been easy to understand if the message they got was that if it weren’t for them I could be doing any number of things that I would love to do.  In this situation I have a responsibility to make a decision to be happy, change jobs or positions, or all of the above.  If the life I’m providing for my family doesn’t give me a joy greater than the stress of the job then it’s not the job for me.)

 

Only a dad, with a brood of four,

One of ten million men or more.

Plodding along in the daily strife,

Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,

With never a whimper of pain or hate,

For the sake of those who at home await.

(These 2 lines are awesome and it will be a different world if we can just harness the power of the implications of these 2 lines in our lives. 

At a superficial glance the first one could be depressing to most men.  We want to stand out from the crowd.  We want to be the best at what we do, to be known for what we are capable of.  I spent years in my job trying to be the best.  It’s been years since I was employed at the floor level and I still get challenges from time to time from people who only know of me and want to see if they could keep up.  This is an exciting accomplishment, it would be a lie to say otherwise, and, yes it can be difficult not to let pride get the best of me.  Here’s the truth though, if I left the company that I work for tomorrow, it would keep ticking right along.  Very successfully at that.  They wouldn’t even notice my absence.  Your career is probably not how God wants you to stand out from the ten million men or more.  The way you stand out for more than your lifetime is to be great as a dad and husband.  Will you perform these roles in such a way that people will feel that something is missing from their lives when you’re gone?  Even just to leave a hole felt by those who loved you would be failure in a sense.  You don’t want to leave behind a bunch of people that were dependent on you, you want to leave those people with a mission and the skills and confidence to carry out that mission.  It should be a feeling more of losing a fellow warrior or brother in arms.

The second line reminds me to take ownership of my situation in life.  Every situation offers me the chance for an education.  It may be an education in one trade or another, or it may be an education in faith, or it may be an education in self.  If it’s difficult then you have an opportunity to learn something about yourself in difficult situations.  Pray and meditate on what makes it difficult for you and what you need to get from the situation, then, if needed, move on.  Whatever you do, do it on purpose.  Don’t base your decisions on emotion.  If life is hard, if you find it difficult to be where you are, then do something about it.  Learn to be content where you are, find another job, move to another state, get marriage counseling, start dating your wife again.  Make life exciting, or less exciting.  Just quit whining about it.  I’m not suggesting that you never talk to your wife about the issues that concern you.  There’s a difference between seeking council and whining.)

 

 

Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,

Merely one of the surging crowd

Toiling, striving from day to day,

Facing whatever may come his way,

Silent, whenever the harsh condemn,

And bearing it all for the love of them.

(It was mentioned above but it’s worth mentioning again.  What burdens do you bear for the sake of providing all you can for your family?  As much displeasure as these burdens may bring can you see them as a blessing in light of the joy that providing for your family brings to your heart?  If not, start looking at other options.  Are you keeping your priorities properly aligned?  Are you working a job that you and your family hate because you are trying to maintain a certain standard of living?  See what you can do without and fix it.  Every job is going to have its challenges, you need to find the one that won’t rob your family of you or you of your family.  But, don’t run from job to job with no plan.  The point is that you will face challenges on this journey, you need to learn to see these challenges as a kind of badge of honor.  Could you really appreciate the value of your family if you didn’t face some challenges, if there were no sacrifice involved, in raising them?)

 

Only a dad, but he gives his all

To smooth the way for his children small,

Doing, with courage stern and grim,

The deeds that his father did for him.

This is the line that for him I pen,

Only a dad, but the best of men.

(“a man is meant to carry such responsibility that he will descend into exhaustion and resentment if he does not have the inner resources that come from living in connection with God” Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men.  It’s very easy for us to apply the ideas of these deeds or responsibilities to our professional lives, but what if we did well at our jobs so we could provide a stable life for our families and focused all of our energy and desire to achieve greatness towards our family.  Not to burden our families with expectations of perfection.  Here is a question that I think illustrates where I’m trying to go.  If someone asked my wife or kids what they think my actions show is most important to me, what would they say?  The 2 answers that should be most obvious to them should be “God” and “us”.)

Ask your kids tuff questions

Good sermon today, not that that’s uncommon.  I’m not sure I could tell you exactly the point Pastor was trying to make because I tend to go off thinking about various things he says during the sermon (because it’s thought provoking, not boring).  What I took from it was “where am I at with Jesus”?  Maybe the better way to put it is “where is Jesus at with me”?  I know where I am with Jesus, I know what he did for me, I know how he feels about me.  The “where is Jesus at with me” question is a little bit harder to answer, at least to answer completely honestly.  Have I just invited Jesus into my life to come along for the ride?  Maybe as long as He doesn’t try to change anything He’s handy to have around.  As long as He’s just there to bring a general sense of holiness to everything, you know, a means to give meaning and justification to everything that I don’t want to let go of.  Or have I accepted His invitation to join in His adventure?  Is He going to be the thread that stitches all of my life experiences together? 

 

Well, this is what Pastor got me to thinking about today.  Since it was on my mind I turned to my boys (ages 19 and 14) and asked them.  When I asked them “where is Jesus at with you?” they both said “I don’t know”.  Not the most desirable answer a parent could want to hear, but it is honest and that’s everything I would hope for from my kids.  As long as they trust me enough to be honest we can figure these things out.  This made me realize a lot of things.  For one thing, as parents, we don’t ask our kids difficult questions because we’re afraid of the answer.  Belief in God is not the issue with my boys, but they are trying to figure out the role he will play in their lives.  But, what` if their answer went something like “dad, I’m not sure I’m into this God thing”?  This is why we might tend to ask questions that deal in vague generalities to see if we can get clues about what’s going on with our kids instead of asking more pointed questions like, “do you believe in God”, “are you doing drugs”, or “are you having sex”. 

 

We are scared of their answers because we have no idea how to respond, right?  The truth is you don’t have to have an answer right away.  The important thing to your kids is that you care.  When you ask a question then listen to the answer without trying to solve the problem within 5 minutes they know you care (Husbands, if you’ve been married for 7 years or more and love your wives deeply then you have begun to develop this ability, it is the very same as the “don’t try to fix it” method used when listening to your wife’s feelings).  When you follow up a couple of days later you start to earn their trust and confidence.  Here are a couple of powerful tools you can use to handle difficult answers or questions.  The first one is to be honest.  If your answer to their question is I don’t know then say “I don’t know”.  Then you say “but, I’ll get you an answer”, ”Let’s research it together”, “give me a couple of days to think about it”, or something like that.  If they criticize you for not knowing or not wanting to answer then just let them know that it’s important enough to you that it’s worth taking some time to get the right answer.  You don’t have to know everything and you should never feel intimidated because you don’t know everything, no one does, not even your teenager.  When you come back with the answer it will give you reason to have more discussion and your kid will respect you for it.

 

The next tool is ask “why” and say “tell me more about that”.  Even if you have no idea what to say these two things will keep the conversation going at least long enough for you to recover from the panic over the question or answer you have just received.  This tool can be combined with the “I don’t know” tool, something like this “why do you think that?  Tell me more about that.  Let me have a couple of days to think about this and I’ll get back with you.” 

 

The “why” tool can be fun because they used it to torture you for the first five or six years of their lives, just don’t go crazy with it, they’ll think you don’t take them seriously and tremendous damage will be done to their trust in you.   

 

The point I’d like to leave with is, talk to your kids.  Treat them like people.  Because they are people.  Very smart people.  They like to know that they are important enough to talk about difficult issues and it helps keep your brain nimble too.  Try it today.