An American Abroad

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I was prepared to joke about leaving the country because of who was elected. I was prepared to be self deprecating about my American ways.

I was not prepared for the amount of lament, grief, anger, and anxiety I'd be experiencing this year, or for how fresh these emotions would feel each week, sometimes each day, as one crisis then the next had me screaming into the void or on my knees in prayer.

I was not prepared to be so grateful to hear Houston mentioned in prayer by UK pastors last week and I was not prepared for how shocked I felt to hear the United States strung together alongside hostile foreign powers in a prayer for peace.

I was not prepared to feel so helpless watching from afar. I was not prepared for the sudden panic of wondering if something awful had happened during a span of hours while I was without wifi (news).

In some ways I feel like we've escaped some sort of disaster by moving away and in other ways feel like I've abandoned my country--the one I'll return to in a year or four. I wonder what all will happen between now and then.

I have always been skeptical of the idea that America is the greatest country on earth. Like, there are some other really good ones, you know? But I really do love it. I love our diversity and our national parks (two things that are currently being threatened). I have taken those things and so much else for granted.

I don't want to take things for granted anymore. I want to actively fight to preserve what is great about our country and to keep working for what could be so much greater. It has been weird to begin to feel this way now, like I've wasted a lot of years asleep and now that I'm awake I'm too far away to act on my convictions.

But the world is actually really small and more connected than ever before, so I can fight for good from here, and for there, and for everywhere. For that, and for these things I am thankful: for the many who were awake long before me and who set the example; for a faith that is global and the practice of which allows for lament as well as jubilation; and for a God who is good, eternal, redemptive, and present. Amen.

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