Love

I really Lived.

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I have heard many times that we need to live life to the full. We just need to live. Period. I may actually be sick of hearing this message. The reason is , no matter how often I hear it, I never know quite how to apply it.

I want to live well, to use my time wisely, but how? How do I know what’s worthwhile?

And even if I know, what if I don’t want to do it?

And even if I want to do it, what if I can’t?

Why does this have to be so hard?

Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it just seems hard because we make it so. That’s probably not news to you.

There’s this song that I happen to really like, and it’s not a Disney sequel one. This one is by One Republic is I am not confusing my band names. Perhaps you’ve heard it, it’s called “I lived.” I read on Wikipedia that one of the band member wrote this song for his son, and such songs are typically the best, because though we don’t know what we want, we have much clearer vision for what we want our children to have. (Even if they aren’t our children, but just children we care about.)

But I love this song because of what it exhorts the listener to do.

Hope when you take that jump, you won’t feel the fall.

Hope when the water rises, you built a wall.

Hope when that crowd screams out, they’re screaming your name.

Hope if everybody runs, you’ll choose to stay.

Hope that you fall in love, and it hurts so bad, the only way you can know is give it all you have.

And I hope that you don’t suffer, but take the pain.

Hope when your moment comes you’ll say: “I, I did it all. I, I did it all. I owned every second that this world could give. I saw so many places, the things that I did. And with every broken bone, I swear I lived.”

I literally get chills just typing these words out, they are so good.

There’s a verse in the Bible that has been made into a song, (as many of them have) but also expanded upon. It goes like this “Teach us  to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

The song tweaks it to “Teach me to number my days, and count every moment, before it slips away. To take in all the color, before they fade to gray. I don’t want to miss, even just a second more of this.”

What these two songs are telling us is very true. And the reason they use the analogies they do is because we understand better that way.

The first song is talking about how we need to live. We need to take jumps of faith, and if our faith is in the right thing, we won’t feel the fall. We need to face the storms of life and build walls to protect ourselves and those close to us. Now, the crowd screaming your name thing can be see many ways, but the best light to put it in, is that we will do so much good that we will be cheered on.

It is so important to me that the writer of the song used the word hope. No parents can make their child do any of these things, they all involve wisdom on the child’s part, and courage, and faith. But it is what a parent should want and prepare their child for. But it get even better.

To hope that falling in love will hurt sounds strange, but it is wisdom. Love, when it is purest, strongest, and most unfailing, hurts the lover. It won’t hurt all the time, but the ability to love so much that it hurts is the ability to have perhaps the highest human connection. I speak of true love, not the pain of unmet desire, that is something else entirely. That kind of love requires you giving it all you have, and that is a great thing.

To stay when everyone else runs, to not suffer, but to view it as taking the pain. Why, that is encouraging bravery, and not being the victim but the hero.

Seriously, I love this father’s prayer. It is like a prayer.

In the chorus of the song we get to the end goal, that the child will one day look back on their life and say “I lived.”

There’s a movie “Secondhand Lions,” which I recommend. It tells the story of two men who had an  amazing life, and passed on what they learned form it to their nephew, Walter. At the end of the movie, the grandchildren of one of the two uncles old foes, a wealthy sheik, show up at their house, and one of them says to Walter. “So those two men form Grandpa’s stories, they really lived?” And Walter says the most powerful line of the movie “Yeah, they really lived.”

I hope that will be said of me when I am gone. Or that I will be able to say it of myself.

It’s not what you do so much as how you do it. If you put your whole heart into it, that is living.

But there is the possibility of living for the wrong thing, and that is where the second song comes in. We only live for a short time. And even if we have good motives, we can easily direct them into the wrong pursuit.

That’s why it’s so important for the Christian to live for God. To do what is right, and what is helpful, not just what we enjoy. I maybe just lost you there. “Another message about how I can’t do what I want, yada, yada, yada.” Well, sorry. I don’t pretend never to struggle with this myself.

But I think that is because I forget the message of these two songs, (and every other form I’ve been told it in.) You don’t give your life meaning, but you can make it meaningful.

See, God gives life. He gives it meaning. But what you do with it, that may be left up to you.

“I lived” get to this as well.

Hope that you spend your days, so they all add up.

And when that sun goes down, I hope you raise your cup.

I wish that I could witness, all of your joy, and all of your pain. But until my moment comes I’ll say…

When all your days add up it should amount to something. Read that again.

Let me repeat, God gives your life meaning, you make it meaningful. That is not saying you have to make an effort to be important. You already are important, and many of us actually wish we weren’t because we see how we negatively affect other people without intending to do so.

No, what I’m saying is, you can pursue worthwhile things, like making other people’s lives better, and even more crucially, worshipping God; or, you can live your life like it was a credit card given to you with no max. You may use it all up on conveniences, but in the end the credit means nothing because there is no such thing as infinite provision without you working for it somehow. You’ll only run up a debt of time.

If you owe something your time, and don’t pay up, you lose your soul. That’s because time is the medium through which we even come to know and grow our soul, it is what God has given us to use for this purpose.

We, as the songs say, need to allot time for many things. For love; for adventure; for serving others; for Faith, foremost of all; and for enjoyment; and for taking in the colors, the rich beauty around us, if we only have eyes to see it.

“That we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Yes, if we realize how our time is precious to us, we gain wisdom. I don’t know about you, gut that’s a kind of wisdom I’m still acquiring, I don’t think I have it yet. But I hope I will continue to learn it.

Maybe there will be some broken bones along the way, I am positive there will be broken hearts, but those can heal. So, when the moment comes when you’ll look back on your life, I  hope you’ll say “I really lived.”

–Natasha.

Poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.
There are no small roles
Reach higher.

Why a DP movie is my favorite part 2

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In part one, I had just said that I felt cursed, as a child, with fear. The troll tells Elsa “Fear will be your enemy.”

When this happens, Elsa is at most 8 years old. I was younger than that when I realized fear was a problem. But like Elsa, I did not start off that way. I was a kid who liked to feel tough. I wasn’t afraid of trying things. I had my first debate about Christianity when I was four, people, I kid you not, (Four or five.) I knew my stuff too. How did Fear enter the equation?

Like with Elsa, except mine took more steps. When I was little, the idea that fear could control me, could make me feel ill and ruin my day, that was introduced through a seemingly insignificant incident, but it lasted. But the experience more akin to Elsa’s traumatic one came when I was 11. Basically it happened to me in reverse order. But what followed was the same. Except, my parents did not tell me to hide, and they did not die (thankfully.) Elsa has that to herself.

But I digress, I spent years learning how to hide, like Elsa; I became an expert at it. Like her, I developed tricks to keep my mind occupied, to cover up. She used gloves, I used books. If I were a different person, the similarities between us would have been scary. As I watched Elsa’s behavior more carefully, I saw the same looks in her eyes I used to feel in my own. Her hands shook under tension, and I used to become shaky whenever I had to sit through an experience that terrified me, which I had to do nearly every week. But after it was over I could act relatively calm, as Elsa does at the party, up until Anna pushes her, And if anyone pushed me, I would have the same kind of meltdown.

I can’t say for sure with Elsa, but I would always feel very sick, I’d go warm and cold, I’d tremble, I would want to curl into a corner and not be seen or talked to. If I couldn’t do that outside, I’d do it inside.

I can remember it all now, though it was awful, it got worse.

Elsa’s story really starts when she runs away, she is not running from her duties, as many have said, but from her fears. Seriously, how did that responsibility idea ever get started? You can see the fear in her eyes; in her ice and snow; she yells “Stay away from me!” Duh. She’s running from herself. But, as that Switchfoot song says, “Where can you run to escape from yourself?”

This of course, was my life. My whole life was trying to run from myself. Every waking moment. You think I exaggerate, I don’t.

But like Elsa, I had moment or two of peace along the way. It never lasted longer than a day. And come to think of it, her time of peace after her song lasts a day total. She begins at dawn, Anna shows up at dusk. The monster of fear can lose its grip for a short time. But the same thing that triggers Elsa back into it was what would trigger me.

I only needed to be reminded of it. this could be something someone said, or it could just hit me out of nowhere. In Elsa’s case, Anna shows up and Elsa holds out for like two seconds against fear, then it grabs her again.

I am now going to hurry through the rest of the movie until the climax. Anna and Elsa argue, as you know, Elsa accidentally hurts Anna deeply, though Anna tries to convince herself it was nothing. Elsa drives them away, (even the terms are symbolic.) They find out Anna is dying, and go back to Hans. He turns out to be a total jerk. And unbeknownst to them, he has already captured Elsa and thrown her in the dungeon. As the villains will do.

A word on Hans. There are two villains in this story, Fear, and the people who help it along. Hans and the Duke of Weasletown are really two sides of the same coin, the difference being Hans is obviously the head and the Duke the tail. So everything Hans does plays off people’s fears. Anna is afraid of not being loved, Elsa is afraid of herself, the people are afraid of, well, freezing to death.  The Duke also plays off the people’s fear, or at least feeds it. He and Hans both want Elsa dead. The Duke is still the lesser villain, being selfish but not intentionally evil. Hans is knowingly the villain.

I had my Hans too, but I always knew it was Fear itself. The spirit of it.

So, the climax. I have told this so many times, I am not sure what the best way is. But you have probably all seen or heard of it, so I’ll keep it short.

Even though True Love has been mentioned a few times, mainly by Anna, and Kristoff, and Granpabby, no one has actually defined it… until Olaf does. This is one of the many reasons I love the movie, it took the comic relief, and without changing his character at all, it made him on of the heroes. Just by knowing what love was. Olaf’s character it so in line with that message that it seems only fitting he would explain it.

I believe in my earliest posts “The Quest” series, part seven dealt with Love, and I talked about Anna’s journey with it. So I’ll just briefly recap: she didn’t know what love was, Olaf told her, but she only got it when she had to make the choice herself.

Anna saves Elsa. “In every way a person can be saved.” She saves her life, she saves her from being sentenced to death unjustly, she saves her from fear.

When I watched this, I was already saved. Honestly, if I hadn’t been, I couldn’t have understood what happened in the space of thirty seconds. The movie itself doesn’t try to explain it, either you understand the miracle, or you don’t. Most of us don’t.

Truthfully, it is not the people’s fault that they don’t get it. I considered myself fortunate to get a peek into the real meaning of what happened. But it has to have happened to you, or you have to be told by someone who had the experience.

Once I realized this, I could forgive the haters. I can even forgive the people who like this movie for the wrong reasons. They just don’t know. They don’t know that I lived that story. And I continue to live it.

Frozen doesn’t end where the movie ends. As the months of hype over it have clearly shown. I think my tone must show how entirely serious I am about this. I relive the story every time I encounter a new challenge in my life.  I call it my movie, because it is, in almost every sense, mine.

This is long enough.  I think I have explained it thoroughly. If you read this far, thank you, I appreciate it. Until next time–Natasha.

Why a DP movie is my favorite.

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So, I mentioned doing a post about Frozen a few articles back. Though I am still not sure anyone but me is interested, I still wanted to do it because, frankly, I’ve wanted to do it since starting this blog.

With that pity plea out of the way, I shall begin. (Seriously, don’t keep reading if you really don’t want to, I get it.)

As everyone already knows the movie was a huge hit and after the first six months or so, people really started laying on the hate. Some of them were frustrated parents, most of the ones I knew were boys who hadn’t ever actually sat through the movie, a few were girls who hated the Disney princess image in general, or else just didn’t get Frozen and were tired of hearing how awesome it was.

I cannot change any of this with a post that will reach only a few people, comparatively, but I do have an interesting story to tell.

When I first saw posters and advertisements for the movie, I rolled my eyes, like many others. I thought “Here we go, another cliché Disney Princess movie with stupid jokes and a story I’ve heard a dozen times.” At this point in my life, I had not been often watching said Disney Princess movies. I will say, Frozen was the most poorly advertised DP movie I’ve seen up to date. But my sister checked it out, and practically forced me to listen to the song “Let it Go.” I almost didn’t bite, but when I heard the line “The cold never bothered me anyway.” And saw the ending with the castle, I was hooked. Even at this point, I only gave this song a B+ and possibly the movie. But I started watching clips, then more clips, and more, and basically, I saw the whole thing in clips multiple times before I ever saw it as a movie.

Though I liked Elsa, the movie didn’t really grab me until I saw the scene that made it iconic. My other sister and I remember this differently, but according to her, once Anna got frozen solid, I went upstairs in a huff. I think I probably just didn’t know what clip to watch to find out what happened next, but my sister found it in no time and I saw what happened. I was hooked before, now I was really in deep.

I became obsessed (see my post “Good Obsession” for how this happens to me.) When this happened I had just been reading a book about finding oneself (for lack of a better term for it. Captivating was the title.) and I soon saw the Frozen could have been made as a dramatization of the book’s message, but even more than that, Frozen was my life.

I am not kidding. Frozen was a movie version of my life story. In fiction form, which is my favorite, so it only gained points there. now, it rarely goes well when I tell people this, I suppose they don’t know how to react to someone claiming to be the subject of this film. Plus, a lot of girls felt that way, so what is my special claim?

Well, I’ve never met anyone yet who had quite the experience I had with Frozen. I have shared before how I used to be a very fear-bound person. Right off the bat, Elsa and I had that in common. But it was more.

Elsa had no common fear of being herself, she had the fear of herself. It is the crucial point that most  people missed when they watched it, and it changes how you perceive everything in the movie.

Fear is portrayed not as Elsa’s gift, but as the corruption of it, a very important distinction. Every time she is afraid, her ice and snow darken, and twist into ugly shapes, or else sharp spikes. But something I noticed at length was how, as the story progresses, the fear becomes less and less subtle. The spikes start to point at Elsa herself, they try to trap Anna inside the castle even when Elsa is no longer in it herself and would personally have no reason to trap anyone, and her storm starts to blind her as well as everyone else.

Fear is the monster in this film. But what does Elsa think? That the monster is her.

I think of what Mrs. Valiant says in “Hinds Feet on High Places.” “She is a Fearing herself, and has Fearing in the blood, and when the enemy is in you that is a very hard thing.” There is a difference from a having fear inside you and being the thing to be afraid of, but it is not a difference people know by instinct.

C. S. Lewis called the fear of oneself the worst fear of all. He was right. I used to have it, I was afraid, literally, to look in the mirror. There is only one point in the movie that Elsa looks at her own reflection, it is when she and Anna are arguing about whether or not she can fix the Winter. Do you know what Elsa says as she looks at herself? “There’s so much fear.”

Mirroring plays a huge role in that story. When we see Anna’s reflection, Anna is always singing or talking about love and being there for Elsa. When we see Hans’es reflection, he reveals his true colors. Hans himself is a mirror for everyone’s worst fears or most vulnerable emotions. (I have to give SuperCarlinBrothers the credit for clueing me into this, they are a YouTube Channel.)

Elsa is never once unaware of her problem. from her childhood she is told “Fear will be your enemy.” And I was, I felt, cursed with the same thing as a child. No one told me it had to be that way, but I kept being told I was worrying too much. I was being a worrier. I was shy.

I am going to continue this in the next post, this is long enough. Until next time–Natasha.

Legacy

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Ever wonder what your impact will be on the world? When you’re gone what will be different because of you? There’s a name for what you leave behind you; it’s called Legacy.

Good old Girl Meets World has an episode devoted to this that I recommend checking out if you can. I don’t want to spend too much time explaining it but I might use the show itself as an example here.

Girl Meets World made its share of mistakes, but it was always clear that their intention was good. You could tell they really wanted to make you think, and they wanted to help you.

It’s a connection that the creator of a movie, show, or book makes with their audience. It’s a way that we know they care, and if we watch or read it, they in turn know we care. Some of us are moved to tears just by realizing that someone out there wants to do right by us, others of us less emotional people just give it respect.

We actually feel betrayed when a show like this gets cancelled, and a book series suddenly takes a different turn and stops being about promoting the good things we liked it for.

Then, bitter or disappointed or just sad, we talk about what that thing meant to us. Other people think we’re nutty for caring so much. We try to explain.

This is why: Someone cared. Someone tried. Someone actually succeeded.

It didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to be good.

I felt understood, or I felt respected. Like the writers actually cared what they were introducing to my mind.

There are those of us who like dirty movies, or horror, but let’s be honest, even if we do, do we truly like the people who put that stuff out there. We let them screw us, figuratively speaking, but do we give them an ounce of respect for it? We may not regard out own minds, but do we really appreciate that they don’t regard us either?

In my limited experience, the people who like horror and sexually charged material are also the ones with low self respect. You expose yourself to garbage when you feel like garbage, it’s just true. (Not that you have to, but that’s why.)

The people who loved Girl Meets World loved it because it respected them. They respected themselves enough to accept it. The kids who got helped by it’s messages about bullying, being yourself, choosing rightly, they all got helped because they had it in them to be helped.

Half the time, the show just reminded us of what we already knew.

But that was okay, goodness knows we need that.

Girl Meets World wanted to make people’s lives better, makes their relationships better, and thereby make the world better. Hence the title Girl (you, boy can be substituted as we all know) Meets (relationships) World (it says itself.)

At the end of both Girl Meets World and its predecessor Boy Meets World, Riley and Cory both realize the meaning of meeting the world. and while I still hope for something more, because of my faith, I won’t deny it’s a good message. Meet the world. Know you aren’t alone in it. Then change it.

That’s a legacy worth leaving. That’s what legacy is. Who you are, who you meet, what you impact. That’s what you leave behind you. Material legacy just represents the unseen legacy.

Those are my thoughts, and this is also my thank you to this show and to every book and movie I’ve ever liked and learned from. Until next time–Natasha.

I feel all right like I could take on the world. Light up the stars I got some pages to turn. I’m singing o-o-oh, o-o-oh. I’ve got a  ticket to the top of the sky. I’m coming up I’m on the ride of my life. O-o-oh, o-o-oh. Take on the world. Take on the world. Take on the world.

SAMSUNG CSC

Reach higher.

Redefining.

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I think the biggest part of the Rebelution is redefining.

We redefine what people are capable of. Teens especially.

We redefine what we need to be interested in.

We redefine how we spend our time.

We redefine our acceptable standards.

On that note, I’ve spent two posts trying to redefine what it is to be lady and a gentleman. But I know if enough people read those posts, someone is going to read it who has questions.

Like: what exactly do I mean when I say that ladies demonstrate kindness and gentleness, or gentlemen demonstrate chivalry.

Let’s talk about it:

Like I said in Ladylike, I think any girl can be lady, no matter what her personality or tastes happen to be. Likewise, any man can be a gentleman.

Often when I watch a movie and say “Now there’s a real man.” I’ll be saying it at a different moment than my dad will. My dad likes it when guys actually act like real guys. That is, they drink, and have contests of strength, and act like flawed human beings, who still have good hearts. He says that’s how guys are around each other. I wouldn’t know. But personally, I watch how these men treat the female characters of the movie.

It’s not just that I’m a romantic, it’s that I know that a lot of boys really don’t talk about girls like they’re even human beings; not just when they’re talking bout who’s hottest or whatever, I mean even when they talk about how girls act with other girls, or with guys, or what girls like, etc. (To be fair, girls do the same thing.)

What impresses me about a man? He doesn’t have to be soft spoken or really gentle outwardly, (though that is always nice) it’s his attitude. When a man, off  screen or on, actually treats a woman, even if it’s his mother, like he cares about how she feels and thinks, and like she’s something to be protected and not taken advantage of, that makes an impression.

Whether this is  romantic relationship, a platonic one, or a family one, it really makes no difference. A man who really cares and shows it by being there, and being there in the right way, that’s the real deal. I like how Gianna Jessen defines men, either as weasels (men who don’t come through) or as uncommon. Which is self explanatory.

Now, I have no hate or anger toward guys who simply don’t come through. I’ve known a lot of them. I’m used to them. But that’s just it, the Uncommon man is uncommon.

I don’t want the girls to think I’m neglecting us, so here’s the straight scoop. The man who comes through may be uncommon, but so it the girl or woman who will let him. Ouch. I don’t intend to come down on us ladies, often there’s a lot of reasons we are the way we are.

To be honest, the Uncommon man and woman are uncommon really because we aren’t training them anymore. We aren’t encouraging them to come out of hiding and astonish us.

What does it look like to do that? It depends.

There’s an example I wanted to use here. On the show Kim Possible, there’s a really stupid episode (The Cupid Effect) that I watched with some amazement the first time. I won’t go into the whole plot, but there is one memorable line that Ron Stoppable utters to Junior, who had used an evil device to cause girls to rave over him. Junior has just laughed at Ron for being in disguise as a girl. (In order to get close enough to stop him.) Ron retorts “Well, you are no gentlemen.”

As stupid as the situation was, and I don’t recommend the episode, I think Ron made a good point. In his usual, unintentional way. It’s not the clothes, it’s why you wear them. Cross dressing really has nothing to do with the plot here, but if someone were to object, I’d point out that Ron was doing it in order to rescue a lot of girls, including his own girlfriend; whilst Junior, who is a muscular sort of man-boy, was using a hypnotic device to control all these girls. Ron may not look the part, but at least he’s acting it.

That sums it up,( in a weird way.) Anything a guy does, if it’s in an effort to respect a girl, or even his own father, can be honorable. Do I think they get it right every time? No. But I do think they get it right more when they are trying to.

As for us girls, well, we have  our share of respect issues. I’ve listened to other girls diss guys while I’m around, and I always get really uncomfortable listening. Look, I know it’s frustrating when guys don’t know how to be manly about things like break ups, or dates, or whatever; but can I just level with you and say:  “If you don’t want to deal with that, stop agreeing to date guys who aren’t ready for relationship.”

It’s not always the guy’s fault. We need to have their backs as much as they need to have ours. I don’t want to have to spell this out, but girls, set standards.

Back to what I mentioned earlier. Guys and girls alike need to understand this, we are all human.

There’s actually a pretty good movie for this subject, called “The Swap.” It shows how, though we express it in different ways, guys and girls are having the same feelings of loss, and anxiety.

It’s actually not that hard to empathize with each other if we’re willing to try.                         In the end, we all want a lot of the same things. We want people to be considerate of us; to treat us like equals; not to make fun of us; and so on. It’s just our definitions of those things happen to be different. But that’s good. It varies from person to person anyway.

To at bottom, being a lady or gentleman really is about treating everyone with respect.005leonidafremov

The Indefensible.

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I’ve been thinking about how my political views effect my writing here. I’ve been reading about how this country got started, so politics are on the brain. I never want to use this blog as an attempt to get followers who agree with me, so I hestitate to bring up the subject too often, but because this is an ideas blog, I also think it’s only fair to let people  know where I stand.

Le tme also say that I don’t judge people’s worth as people by their political views, and I wouldn’t want to be judged by it either.

I only care about politics as it relates to my faith, many Christians don’t believe we should be concerned or involved in politics. And in countries where the system doesn’t allow Christianity in its government, that might be a fair view. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care. Everyone should care. But there is the trap, as C. S. Lewis describes in The Screwtape Letters, of coming to use your faith as a support for political views, instead of seeing your views as a  direct result of your faith. In other words, you make your faith match your politics, or any other mode of thinking you might have. Obviously this is wrong.

I am a  conservative, but that is because I found those principles to be in line with what the Bible teaches, if I was convinced Liberalism was more in line, I would be that. I know plenty of Christians who are liberals, and that’s up to them. I actually don’t think God cares about that first and foremost.

The problem is we often care about it a little too much, I’m sure if you had a dime for every time you’ve heard someone put the opposing side in a box (or basket) you’d be rich. Or at least you’d have a lot of dimes.

The situation we have now is pretty sad, almost no one can see the other side as full human beings. We don’t talk about them like that, and we don’t treat them like that, often enough. They are indefensible.

Like Trump and Hillary, whichever side you are on, one of them is indefensible. I do think that sometimes, there is no just way to defend someone’s actions. But we have carried it a little too far when I can, on two different occasions, get shocked and somewhat hostile reactions from kids in my own family when I say I support Trump. It’s an immediate guilt by association. Would I feel the same if it had been over Hillary? Well, that’s tricky.

I would not ever condone voting for her, but do I condone the things people say about her? No, not all of them. I would defend Hillary Clinton as I would defend another human being, but not as a politician. All this means is that I believe people deserve some measure of respect, whether I like them or not.

I know I will have people who don’t agree with me reading this, and that is okay. They can even hate me if they wish. I won’t return it. It is not that I have never been tempted to hate people who believe things I find horrible or ridiculous. (And, let’s face it, we all know I can’t help feeling that way whichever side I’m on.) My whole reason for not holding a grudge is simply that I don’t believe it is right to do so. Grudges are stupid.

Even the Clintons (pardon my phrasing) need to be forgiven and loved, and that may never look like what the people who support them would call love, but calling it hate to not support them is ridiculous. It just is. I would not say anyone who does not support one of the politicians I favor hates anyone, let alone the politician themselves. I may be giving myself as an example too often here, but I’ve been reading about Thomas Jefferson, and this was his  belief. He never even defended himself to the press of his day because he didn’t think it was necessary. And he remained friends with one of his opponents (more than one actually) to his dying day. He stated that politics were no reason to end a friendship. (Though there may be reasons within that general category to end one, but that’s another discussion.)

At the end of the day, though I care about my country and my people, I recognize that no country lasts forever; and no political party does either. It would be foolish to stake all one’s beliefs on those things. I believe more strongly in love, justice, and God’s will.

A really good, and short, book that covers this is The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, particularly the chapter on Affections, (if I’m not mistaken in my locations.) He’ll say it better than I.  I hope though, I said what I was trying to communicate.

So, there, that’s my piece for now. Until next time–Natasha.