My 4th Day of July

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

It is so much easier

To be in Brazil on the 4th of July

Where it is just another day

I lay in bed this morning

Scrolling the internet

To find what I am

Trying to say

If I could just find the right post

To share

Something kind of funny

Kind of sad

Something that says it slant

So I don’t make anyone too mad

Something that doesn’t hide my pain

That so many I love say

I am not supposed to have

I know they say to just put my phone away

And I often do

And it is often good

But sometimes I just don’t want to look away

Sometimes I think today

Is the day

I need to take a stand

And I feel so powerless

That the Internet is the only place

I feel able to take a stand

I am ashamed

That I feel like a post

Will do something

Or be enough

Maybe I am overreacting

Maybe it is not all the bad things I think it is

Maybe they are right and it will all

Actually be what we really needed to

Move forward as a country

I don’t think I have all the answers

Or even understand things enough

To get most of it right

But my soul knows

Something is wrong with this

Republican Christian Nationalist narrative

I’m being told to swallow

The people who taught me Jesus

Are the ones telling me

I’ve strayed

But I feel like I’ve stood firm

And they’ve abandoned me

“Just come back and everything will be ok.”

“It will be like it used to be.”

Can I be honest and say I just

Wish that were true?

I don’t want the hard work of sorting out

The rot that I know is in there

I want to show you how

We can disagree and still love each other

I feel pushed away

Until I return the prodigal

But you aren’t the running father

You are the back turned older brother

So I lay here in bed

Scrolling for the right words

Instead of trying to write my own

The pretty graphic that will somehow

Make them see

“Oh, I get what she was saying now.”

But it isn’t coming

It won’t come

There are no secret words

To make this fall into place

No magic way to say it

That will give relief

It used to be enough that I was the

Middle class white girl

Who didn’t shake the boat but played with the kids

Who loved Jesus and was a missionary

I was non-threatening

I was happy and busy doing my things

And then somehow

doing what I always had done became policial

I became controversial

For crying over dead children

Suddenly I wasn’t safe anymore

How quickly I went from being

the missionary girl to being

the political girl

I was told to stay in my lane

But I hadn’t moved

They keep trying to push me into their lane

Calling it Jesus’s lane

They call for me to come home

But they’ve moved somewhere unrecognizable

I am homesick

I learned a long time ago

That “home” isn’t what they are selling

They forgot that

That’s what they taught me

Before I learned to question things

I won’t find the answer on the internet

Eventually I have to get out of bed

And go live my life

My solution will be to ignore

Without posting anything at all

And the unsatisfactory feelings

Will eventually lead me

To create my own post

Eventually

I just hope

I have enough time

The privilege of time

Isn’t always there

But most of the time

We don’t know that

Until it is too late

Why is it so hard to recognize?

Why can’t the crisis be labeled more distinctly

Did those in history, during times of crisis

Understand the crisis

Before it was already in the middle?

We celebrate the brave

Who knew when and how to stand

But how did they know “THIS is my moment”

I don’t think they knew

They just acted

And all the ones who got it wrong

Just aren’t remembered

And the ones who got it right

Are celebrated

Perhaps it is a bit of luck, of faith

Trying to stand for what is right

At the right time

In the right way

With the right post

No pressure