I awoke thinking about all the things I don’t know. The list is really long even when I disregard physics and how to paint a room without making a mess. I am more focused on why people are mean, unforgiving, scared. Why do Christians lash out in such hurtful ways? Why would anyone hit that post button that shreds another’s dignity? How have we allowed bullying to become acceptable? I don’t know these things. I do believe as surely as I know my God created you and me that it just has to stop. I have to help it stop.

Psalm 4:4-5 says Be angry and do not sin. Meditate within your heart on your bed and be still. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and put your trust in the Lord.  I love this passage. It doesn’t say don’t get angry. Anger is healthy, necessary even, I believe. The problem is what we do with it. The example of Jesus Christ is a great place to start. He got angry, he hurt no one. Conflict resolution seems a lost art. Listening, hearing, forgiving rather than shouting, blaming, labeling.  I love that the Psalmist tells me to just stay in bed and mediate within my heart, to be still. To allow time for those whispers from God to calm my soul and lead me away from my humanity and into His light. To offer up the sacrifice of my righteous, sheer beauty! To give to my Creator all of my “But he started it” s and “But you know, you KNOW I am right”s is about the most courageous thing I can do. Accepting humility, accepting that I just have to let God be the scorekeeper actually frees me of the anger, slowly sometimes, but still, frees me.

I want this election cycle to be over even though the name calling and hate culture may last. I want to remind my friends and strangers that we are better than this. I want to be better than this. I don’t know how we got here but lets join together and move to a new place, our beds, where we will meditate and be still. A timeout for all of us until we can be nice. Until we can worry less about being right and more about being kind. If you don’t see me early in the morning, I am not sleeping in, just taking a little extra time to start my day, giving up some righteousness. I have to start somewhere. That is what I do know.