I was surprised by a kind of joy. Let me have it, please.

Left: photo I sent after midnight to siblings. Right: photo I sent them this morning.

I am so inspired as I write this on November 6, the day after the election.

I’m going to write it raw and not fuss with editing. I’m not going to pause and come back to tamp it down and be more reasonable. I’m just gonna write it and let it flow.

I’ve already missed a client Zoom call and barely made any billable client hours because my head is all over the place. Each attempt to be productive has ended up with me scrolling through election updates while listening to AC/DC “Thunderstruck” and I am a useless worker today. I finally went to the gym just to burn off some energy.

Because of joy. Adrenaline, maybe. But mostly joy.

I don’t often feel joy as I am a sort of introverted downer person. I have had moments of joy where my face won’t stop grinning:

• At Walt Disney World years ago with my sister’s family.

• Crossroads Range Bible Camp.

• Hot air balloon ride over the Arizona desert.

• Riding the SheiKra at Busch Gardens in Tampa.

• At a Zach Williams / Ben Fuller concert.

• Etc.

It’s not the same as joy that comes through faith.

It might be closer to happiness but on a high-octane level. It’s a coursing, shocking feeling. Senses and ideas are all overwhelmed, and experience is so much more than the expectation that the mind is short-circuited.

I have so much excitement flowing through me that I don’t know how to process it. I am absolutely unused to feeling this up, this hopeful, this surprised, this gobsmacked. I have, apparently, learned to function in a world of disappointment and down-ness.

For some reason, I’m supposed to temper my enthusiasm.

I’m supposed to be calm and act as if nothing happened. I am to forget all of the terrible things said about people like me from the Obama era onward.¹ I am quickly told not to gloat or feel anything good because that doesn’t promote healing and unity, but instead, to immediately be conciliatory or casual as if nothing momentous happened. I am told to be mindful of people’s feelings. I am to be meek and receive the anger, fear, and parroted MSM talking points from those who disagree with me, those who have patronized, mocked, and dismissed me in the years and months leading up to Election Day 2024, and who are still doing so in the face of defeat.

And I get it.

Gloating and pride and all kinds of mocking are not what Christians should do.

Granted, we’ve faced it these past years—some of it from relatives who seem to take joy in mocking the very people who care about them—but I would just like permission to be giddy. Just for a little while, for it happens so seldom these days. We prefer cynicism and sarcasm and critique.

I understand people are upset and angry today.² I’ve seen some very strange videos of people very upset at the election outcome am not impressed with the idea of losing all control of rage in front of a camera for the world to see.

“It’s like those break rooms,” I told my friend as we went to the gym. “I question the wisdom of trying to defeat anger and rage by turning it loose without control as you break things. Seems like you’re only feeding it, not defeating it.”

The more you let the animal out, the more it waits at the door to get out.

Maybe I’m just too old, a Gen-Xer who is embarrassed by the extreme emotion unabashedly put on display. I’m not thrilled to see so much crying and screaming online, nor real heartbroken people putting suicide threats on Reddit.³

But can I just have some joy?

Because by 2 a.m., when the election was called, I was so overwhelmed with excitement that I could hardly sleep, sending Snapchats to my siblings of me wearing my Trump hat, the one I bought this summer in the Black Hills. And, as I said, today has been a complete work waste. I couldn’t concentrate enough to clock a billable client hour.

Was it because I thought President Donald Trump was going to save the world and the nation and me?

No.

It was because, to borrow from Gerald Ford, it felt like the nightmare was over.

We like to say that facts don’t care about feelings and feelings don’t matter, and I understand that over-correction in light of the uncontrolled feelings driving people.

But feelings do matter. God gave them to us. He asked us to control them, not deny them.

Since March 2020, I have been internally contracting further and further, almost hunched over to trudge into the gale, knowing the command is to occupy until Jesus returns and making every effort to do so. The mindset became living in occupation, curled inward, not a light shining outward.

I kept doing client work, I wrote books trying to understand what happened in the pandemic, I continued thinking of new projects and attempts to build my business, I planned trips and fun things with family, tried to show kindness to people who were hurting, and while I had true hope in eternity, living in the now was feeling hopeless. Every day was a slog.

Get up. Chase after a few dollars that bought less and less. Hear about billions of tax dollars flowing into Ukra[MONEYLAUNDERING]ine. Watch the moral decay of things God says are wrong instilled in our Federal government as something to celebrate, forced onto the people. Listen to family and friends who are choosing not to expand their businesses or make purchases or travel plans until they know if it’s Harris’ or Trump’s economy coming down the pipe. Hear stories from family members working at the border about what’s going on. Note the increase in crime as illegals flood the country and wonder when it will stop.

“I’m okay,” I would say. “We’ll be okay. God is in control.”

True statements. It was life. It wasn’t bad; America is still a wonderful place. I tried to be faithful, to do the work God placed before me.

But I struggled with joy.

It was elusive, like cryptozoology, rarely seen and understood. I had to reduce exposure to media and all the arguing and fighting. I restricted access to people who seemed to simply enjoy endless arguing or hating folks like me while pretending, with rainbows and words, that they were the ones who knew love.

You have to guard the little joy you have left. A lot of things steal that joy.

If I showed you my prayer notebook, which I’ve had since 2019, you’ll see the pattern of me asking God for joy. It was too ironic that Harris thought to use “joy” as part of her campaign promise. When I think of Harris, I think of a lot of things, including David Daleiden⁴, but I don’t think of joy.

The past four years have felt like heavy darkness settling in everywhere, from bank accounts to national and international crises to culture to spiritual darkness.

When Biden took office, I was sick.

I knew our economy would tank, I knew anything Federal would have pandemic rules slapped into place (they did; I didn’t go to national parks or use any Federal facilities for years until those rules were lifted, nor did I travel on airlines or trains), I knew godless woke morality and identity nonsense would be forced on the nation from a Federal level. I feared for my friend’s job because of potential vaccine mandates that might be forced down through Federal rules or punishments—I spent a lot of time praying and quietly holding in the fear and stress I felt during those years.

I stuck money away in savings because things were going to get rough (and they did). I knew there would be family members who wouldn’t be able to stand on their own financial feet and we’d all have to be ready to help. I watched as unemployment skyrocketed and remembered reading about how many suicides happened for each percentage point.

Today, with President Trump the winner of the election, gold plummeted while bitcoin, the dollar, and the stock market shot up. I’m not saying it’s permanent, but it’s a reaction. It’s not the same reaction as joy, but it’s a reaction to something that has shifted.

I’m not interested in making mean videos and gloating, but I’m not going to let anyone steal my joy no matter how well-meaning they are.

Know that I don’t look at a politician as a savior.

I never have.

I don’t expect perfection from human leaders. The longer you live, the more you realize pedestals are just bear traps. I know that the political machine is built to grind and disappoint, no matter who is pushing the buttons. No one person can please everyone.

I know Jesus is on the throne, I know he’s my Savior, I know God sets up leaders and takes them down, I know Trump isn’t perfect, I know there could be some crazy stuff ahead and things won’t go as we think. I know Jesus comes first, not our nation, and making our nation great again can’t happen without people turning to God.

I know. I do.

But let me have some joy, unapologetically, without a lecture.

Let me be ecstatic without tempering it with caveats.

The strange masochistic tendency of modern Evangelical Christians to turn a win of any sort into an admonishment to downplay it is strange to me. Let this Gen-Xer have her good day before we get back to low-key “whatevs” business. A joyless life is like solitary confinement, and today’s little taste of joy won’t last very long. So let me have it.

Thanks.

UPDATE: My Triple Crown Secretariat theory.

1. Clinging to guns and Bibles, deplorable, garbage, uneducated, smelly WalMart people, lacking college degrees, backward religious nationalists, racist, anti-science, anti-vaxx, anti-choice, Nazis, morons, misinformed by misinformation, go learn to code you blue collar schmuck, antisemite, hates women, authoritarians, Constitution haters, bigot, transphobic, homophobic, etc etc etc yada yada yada blah blah blah.

2. It seems to be a rage about concentration camps, death squads targeting trans people, and the shredding of the Constitution as the fears of people who voted for Harris manifest into real emotional brokenness whether the fears are founded in reality or not. My fear when Biden was elected was that he’d put in national COVID mandates, destroy the economy, and force DEI/CRT nonsense down our throats by instilling it in an authoritarian way at the national level. And he did that. You will not see concentration camps, etc. happen under Trump. I did not make screaming agony videos when Biden “won.”

3. I am concerned about the things said by the media and celebrities that have harmed the mental health of young people. I am not joking. There are too many folks who don’t seem able to discern truth from hyperbole. If you want to see examples, go to the Reddit Lies X feed.

4. I would NEVER vote for Harris because of what she did to Daleiden. There are many other reasons I wouldn’t vote for her, absolutely, and it’s not about being a single-issue voter in regards to abortion (though we could have that discussion). But I’ll never forget what she did to Daleiden. It’s about Harris using her God-given position of authority as an enforcer of law and justice to bring injustice to people. In 2015, Daleiden secretly recorded conversations with Planned Parenthood executives, revealing them casually and eagerly talking about how they aborted babies in a way that they could keep various body parts intact so they could sell them. This was illegal. As the Attorney General of California, Harris should have gone after Planned Parenthood, but instead, laid the hammer down on Daleiden for violating the state’s Privacy Act. She did nothing about the trafficking of murdered baby body parts. And that, full stop, makes her a terrible choice for President. She protected the strong instead of the weak and did not enforce the law fully. There are many qualities that prohibit her from being the top executive in the nation, but gleeful and purposeful injustice tops the list.