This post originally appeared in Jessica’s Substack newsletter.
“…Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” Psalm 30:5 (NKJV)
I started writing this piece on Saturday afternoon and got distracted by so many different things, but I must say that in all my 28 years of life, I have never felt so relieved.
In all my 28 years of life, I have never watched so much MSNBC (not even when I watched Keith Olbermann’s show every night when I was in high school), I’ve never clenched my jaw so tight, and I’ve certainly never prayed so hard.
Over those 28 years, I have definitely never seriously debated writing election-related fanfiction to deal with my emotions about waiting three and a half, almost four days for results that are likely to be (unsuccessfully) contested for days, weeks, even potentially months to come.
But over the course of the last several days all of those things happened. And yesterday morning, after three and a half years plus three and a half days that felt like an entire lifetime and then some, I got what I (as well as many of my friends near and far) were praying for when Joe Biden was finally declared to be the President-elect.
Since that moment, I have barely been able to stop crying.
The tears, as they do for many of my friends, keep flowing regardless of how much we want to stop them. These tears are different than the ones we shed in November 2016, however. These, well, these are happy tears.
They are joyful tears instead of the sad ones that ravaged my life this time four years ago. Happy, joyful, hopeful, relief-filled tears fall and fall as the faith we were told to keep in the process and throughout the process got us the results we had prayed for. It felt and still feels like the weight that had me aching and lacking sleep and vomiting with anxiety and making contingency plans for absolute and utter catastrophe over the last nearly four years finally dissipated.
Even now as the dust starts to settle and the work ahead of us makes itself painfully clear, I keep going back to the phrase “keep the faith,” that Joe Biden said late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning (depending on how you determine the passage of time).
Over those next few days, the Facebook cover photos and Twitter banners and Instagram graphics echoed that sentiment. “Keep the faith.” It was everywhere, a steady, rhythmic reminder of the one task I needed to undertake.
“Keep the faith,” my brain kept echoing as I went to pray, truly deeply pray, for results and peace via Facebook live services from my church each night of the week. “Keep the faith,” I typed over and over and over and over in quickly and easily scrapped essay drafts. And keep the faith? Hell, I could do that.
After dropping off my ballot in the drive-through line at our local DMV on Halloween night, “keep the faith” was just about all I could do that was actually productive. It was all that was in my power.
Sure, I could watch the coverage (and did). I could doom-scroll (and did) through the Twitter feed littered with anxiety and angst and memes. (Lord, the memes!) I could donate (and did to several organizations and both Democratic candidates for the Senate out of Georgia), but outside of those wildly specific things? I couldn’t do much else.
I couldn’t (and still can’t) do anything to speed up the process or effect change at this point. I wasn’t (and am still not) a poll worker in Pennsylvania or Georgia or Arizona or Nevada. I wasn’t (and am not still) Steve Kornacki actively analyzing the results. I am not an expert or a clairvoyant, I am merely a simple woman simply at the mercy of a highly complicated system (which is incredibly unhealthy for my anxiety). I had cast my ballot and I had made my own voice heard.
But, the one thing I could still do on top of everything I was doing (healthy behaviors and not) I did. I kept my faith in the process working out. I kept my faith in the truth coming out. And it did, it finally did, in a way that I truly feel was at the mercy of the Lord. As I said to my wife the other day, “This is some divine intervention kinda shit, bro.”
By the grace of God, I have hope again. I have hope for America again. I feel far better (not great, obviously because the pandemic continues to rage, etc.) about bringing my daughter into the world now knowing that about 72 days from now, this country will finally once more have a leader we can count on.
We’ll have a leader willing to listen to the will of the people, rather than the whims of corporations. We’ll have a leader with compassion, a cabinet filled by experts rather than nepotism. We’ll have a conversation about and a plan for how to best move forward, how to undo the damage done in the last four years. We’ll have a leader who truly engages in his faith instead of hiding behind the smoke and mirrors of prosperity preachers and evangelicals whose “Christian values” are far removed from my own.
I am elated to have watched the President-elect speak and been able to feel hope. I was delighted to watch the Vice President-elect speak and feel hope. Knowing my daughter will be born into a version of America that has elected a Black and Asian-American woman as its Vice President makes me fear a little less for what she may endure as the half-Asian-descended daughter of two gay white women.
Having hope again in the midst of a pandemic and an incredible impending life transition feels surreal, feels unimaginable. If I’m being honest with myself, it feels almost wrong. But it’s the truth.
Feeling this great, deep, almost-certainly-heaven-sent sense of hope and joy and peace after three and a half years of darkness and anxiety and worry is such a stark contrast. A welcome one.
When I saw the news of the results, announced by my least favorite team of anchors on MSNBC (Morning Joe is just not at all my taste and my thoughts on that shall be reserved for a time that is not this one), I shouted for Kristi downstairs (who was supposed to be in session with a client but her client no-showed and for once that came at a good time), heaved a sigh of relief so large it shook the cats laying near me, and began to sob openly, violently, unceasingly.
We celebrate this weekend for the ones whose lives will be saved via a decent pandemic response. We celebrate this weekend for the LGBT+ folks whose rights will be protected. We celebrate this weekend for the hard and often thankless work that Black, Latinx, and Native organizers did across the country in states that were all but counted out in the fight for justice. (Georgia? Pennsylvania? Who knew?)
We deserve to celebrate because it feels like the sun is finally rising on a new day, after four years of storms and cloud cover. It feels like this dark night is finally coming to a close. The sun is rising.
The sun is rising on a new day and while that day will be one where we will still have to do the work to engage our brothers and sisters and friends and families and elected officials and candidates on the issues of racial justice, of climate change, of education reform, of gun control, of equity and equality and steer them in the direction of policies and procedures that will ensure safety and opportunity for all. We can keep the faith in the process that has gotten us this far and keep the faith in the organizers bolstered and empowered by the work they did to get us to this point. We can keep the faith in the great work that has been done and the work that is coming. Joy is coming in the morning, and for that, we can all be glad.
On the morning of January 20th, we will be ushering in a better America. Let us rejoice and be glad.