Birthdays Should Never Fall on Election Day

...unless your candidate wins.  Of course, I would have no idea what that's like.

It's about to get real around here, y'all.

(Sometimes I like to pretend that I can pull off saying "y'all".)

As I've mentioned multiple times before, my birthday fell on election day this year.  

At first I didn't think it would be too bad.  But at around, oh, 11:30 PM, EST,  It became the worst birthday ever.  

But I'm skipping ahead.  Let's begin at the beginning.  My birthday fell on a Tuesday this year, which means I was in class from 8:30 AM - 5:40 PM with a few breaks in there.  My day went pretty great!  Even though classes are no fun, I love the ladies in my program a lot.  They are a fun group to spend almost all of my time with, so a birthday was no different.  And I broke out for lunch with my sister from my favorite Thai restaurant.  

As I walked back to class after our lunch in the beautiful sunlight I was feeling pretty on-top-of-the-world!  

But then my last class, which is a counseling class, happened a few hours later.  We had the "pleasure" of having a guest speaker in our class.  He spoke to us about suicide and abuse.  Cheery topic, no?  Anyway, those are sad topics alone, and I've had enough experience with real abuse and neglect with my 4 years in the public school, that I didn't really need to hear all the intense, graphic stories he shared with us.  

When I finally got home later that night, I saw that my mother-in-law had brought us a delicious dinner!  Naturally, what happened around that time?  All of the stories that our guest speaker had told us came rushing back, since I had been too busy concentrating on driving to think about until that point (traffic was bad).  I was sobbing when Luke came out to the kitchen so we could eat dinner.  He gave me the strangest look ever, and I told him about the guest speaker and how I didn't understand why God lets people like that have kids and he won't let us have kids, and blah blah blah.  I was a mess.  And kind of laughing and crying at the same time, because I knew I was totally an emotional wreck, and Luke must have thought I was crazy.  

Anyway,  I finally pulled myself together, and we had a nice evening.  We enjoyed dinner, and I opened my gifts, which I am so thankful for!

There's most of my loot, plus a nice Akron sweatshirt from Julie, and a cupcake carrier, complete with chocolate cupcakes from my parents.

After dinner, I had tons of lesson planning preparation that I had to, so I was busy with that until about 10 (I was exhausted because I had gotten up at 5:45 so I could vote before I left for classes).  And then I just wanted to sit on the couch and relax and do nothing for the rest of my birthday!  Of course I couldn't do that with all the election coverage going on.  It was so close for awhile, and I was so excited!  Then I fell asleep for about a half hour or so, and when I woke up it was over.  

As a big Romney supporter, I wish I could say I reacted like a grown-up person.  But I immediately lost it and started bawling.  You see, I had put my hope in the wrong place.  I had put my hopes in a presidential candidate whom I thought could take some positive steps toward ending abortion.  A candidate whom I knew would stop enabling the lazy, and taking from the hard-working (I just did a huge research paper on behavioral management.  In almost all of my research across the board, what was one of the main methods that worked just about every time?  Operant conditioning.  Rewards for good behavior, and punishments for bad behavior.  If you reward people for their bad behavior by giving them everything they need even when they are lazy, and punish people with good behavior by taking away the rewards that they have worked so hard for, that is the opposite of what has been proven time and time again to work.  To me, it's common sense.  And I know it's not just lazy people who get government assistance, and some rich people had everything handed to them.  But as someone who is married to man that works 50-60 hour weeks, and I am busy working my butt off to help provide for our family, it is hard to see it that way. But I will step off of my soapbox.  Clearly, I am not 100% over this yet).  And also a candidate who was willing to support our military and their families.  One who would enable the small business that my husband works for to continue to thrive.  My hope was in him so much, that when he did not win the election, my hopes completely shattered.  I am not kidding -- I cannot remember being that upset about anything for a long time.  I think I was going through the grief cycle.  I barely slept at all that night, so I had barely risen out of my funk by Wednesday.

And let me just touch on Facebook.  The gloating was a little annoying, for sure.  I had decided that if Romney had won, I was not going to post a thing to Facebook about it, because I  knew how that would be salt in the wound for an Obama supporter.  However, worse than the gloating, were the people who were complaining about how upset the Romney supporters were!  I almost said so many things I knew I would regretted, so I finally signed off of Facebook for awhile.  But please, just try to tell me it wouldn't have been completely the same, only opposite, if Romney had won!  I've gotten off on another tangent....

My point is, I had put my hopes in Mitt Romney instead of my God.  My prayer the whole time had been that God would pick the best leader for our country.  But I now realize I didn't mean that prayer.  I knew who I was really praying for as the best leader.  If my hope had been in Christ, my reaction would not have so dramatic and extreme.  

Over the past couple of days, I have mostly made peace with things, and have remembered who is really in control.  That's all that really matters in any situation anyway!

And in 2016?  The presidential election is on November 8!  No matter who wins, I will be able to enjoy my birthday that year!  Yes, yes...I realize how narcissistic that sounds. But you can come talk to me after you have to sit through a suicide and abuse lecture, and then find out the election did not go the way you wanted it to on your birthday.  Then you can tell me how fun that would be.   

Like I said, I'm mostly over it.  I am human, and I admit I still feel a little bitter.  I also tend to put too much pressure on my birthday to be the greatest day ever.  juvenile, I know.  I'm working on it!

More cheerfulness next time, I promise!!