Feeling Grateful and Hopeful for 2018

2017 has brought me much anxiety. When President Trump was elected, I flew out to participate in the Women's March on DC. Since then, I've periodically interacted with Trump supporters on Twitter and Facebook, arguing over issues like climate change, reproductive rights, the criminal justice system, and immigration. The exchanges are often brutal, with opponents calling me stupid and worse. It's hard to articulate how fractious our country is in December of 2017. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the acrimony. These conversations make me feel dirty and hopeless.

But then I stop. I look around. I remember. 

I'm living in the most beautiful place I've ever inhabited. After having a heart attack in 2015, my husband is alive and well and still loves me 34 years into our marriage. Two of our three adult children are happy and healthy. The third is in a hospital where he might get some help, where he's safe and warm and housed and fed.

Could it be God has a plan for me? Probably not. But if I turn off the incessant chatter of "doomsday!" called out by the media and populace on both sides of the divide, I can see that things are as they've always been--beautiful beyond reckoning, chaotic, loud, tragic, and intermittently strewn with exquisite, almost unbearable gifts.