This week has been incredibly difficult for me as woman to grapple with the fact that our nation is choosing hate over love, especially when I like to think we live in a country that is one of progress and breaking norms. But in my eyes, the election proved the opposite. While I understand the fear many people had in having Hillary Clinton as our president, as a woman I couldn’t believe some people would rather have a misogynistic man who has sexually assaulted women in office over Hillary. I am not upset that my candidate didn’t win, but instead I am upset with the candidate who did win and what that means for our country, as a bigot will now hold the highest office of our country.
Many people in my life have made comments about how this isn’t the end of the world, it will only last for four years. Yes, this is true. And I can only hope it will last for only four years. But as a woman, and one who has a really high rate of being sexually assaulted (1 in every 5 college women are sexually assaulted) right now, I am nervous about what is to come. I am nervous about minorities, and those who have struggled for so long in this country and how everything they have accomplished in gaining rights and freedom could be taken away or reversed. I am nervous for my own brother and his future in a country that apparently is okay with racist rhetoric. I have cried many times thinking about what his life could look like in a world where people might start to think it’s okay to bully and to discriminate against others, because a president does.
Ultimately, I am struggling. I am afraid. Going to a Jesuit university, I know Jesus reigns. I know that God is greater and He is in control. But that doesn’t mean that I have to be okay with Donald Trump being president. And it doesn’t mean that my fears aren’t real. God hasn’t placed these fears on my heart for no reason, and I will not stand back and watch God’s children be hurt, violated, or abused by a man holding the highest position of power in the United States. I will not do it, because God calls us to love everyone, and to CARE for one another. And I am not done fighting and loving yet. Not when I am a woman, and my brother is black.
Today I am clinging to God’s sovereignty, and knowing He is just, and that He has called me to stand up for the powerless, the voiceless, the orphans and the widows in today’s world. I hope you will do the same.
**All thoughts on the election and religion are entirely of the author’s own opinion.**
Photo credit to Jon Snow, from the Standing in Solidarity Vigil held in Hemmingson Rotunda on November 11.