Nothing in the Way

One of my favorite authors is Anne Lamott. I love her voice, I love her sense of humor, and I love the way she seems to capture the experience of living her faith in the real world---a world that sometimes leaves us with our hands up in the air asking, "Really...this is REALLY happening?"

I received a recommendation for her book, Traveling Mercies, in my late twenties, and from the very first few pages, I felt connected to her writing and her experiences. I quickly devoured Mercies and soon read everything else she had written. Her stories resonate with me, and as such, they hang in my memory and come back to me often in my daily life.

Like me, Anne understands that belief in Jesus does not preclude affiliation with the left, and is happy to align herself with God and Democrats. So it is not surprising that, now that my tears of joy and wonder and pride have been wiped away long enough for me to type, I reflect on yesterday's events and recall a story Anne presents in Traveling Mercies.

I can't do this story justice, so trust me, if you haven't read it you should go buy her book, but here is the gist of it: Anne wants to go visit a childhood friend's critically-ill mother before she passes away, and she wants to bring her son, Sam, along with her for this visit. On the day that they are able to go, their new car breaks down, and a hilarious scene with telling people off mixed with praying for help ensues. After that attempt to go gets foiled, other things get in the way---I believe that her son gets sick, maybe, and then he has to be in school on other days? I don't remember exactly, but suffice it to say, everyday that Anne would like to take Sam to see her friend's mom, it isn't possible.

Knowing that this woman would be dying soon, Anne eventually decides that she'll just need to go on this visit without Sam, even though this disappoints her. As it turns out, though, on the day that she goes to visit, the dear woman is dying, and Anne is able to be there for her friend, helping her through those last moments with her mother, and share that very sacred time with the dying mom.

In that moment, Anne begins to see that all of the frustrations that kept her from getting to her friend's house may have really been blessings. She theorizes that sometimes God may put other things in the way of our plans---annoying, frustrating, sometimes painful and expensive and depressing things---just to make sure that we show up at the perfect time and in the perfect way in the end. In essence, we don't know what great moment is around the corner, and maybe if we did, we would get in our own way and potentially spoil it. If Anne had made it with Sam to see her friend's mom the first day, she would have missed the amazing moment that she was meant to share with her friend, a moment she could not have planned for but was perfect in timing, nonetheless.

As I saw President-Elect Obama last night stride out onto the stage with his family, I felt my chest rise up into my throat, and tears began to well-up in my eyes. I listened to his speech, clutching my husband's hand and saying, "Can you believe this? Can you believe how completely amazing this moment is?" Then, when he was done speaking, and Michelle Obama, Vice President-Elect Biden and Jill Biden came on the stage, I just started full-out weeping and laughing with joy. The image of them smiling, hopeful, all with hands linked and raised together---it still just takes me over as I type. What a moment.

When I think of how bleak these past eight years have seemed---watching President Bush take an election in a win that was questionable; living a mile away from the Pentagon on 9/11, hearing the sound of the explosions, running outside to see and smell smoke rising; sitting slack-jawed as we launched a war in Iraq, wondering where we could possibly go from there; being dumb-founded when President Bush won again, questioning whether I knew anything about the American people at all; then finally, white-knuckling these past few months as the economy has gotten worse and worse, wondering if we will have any financial hope after graduate school---I now suggest that Anne's premise may hold for America, too. While I could never say that the tragedies that have marked our recent history can be called blessings, if the past eight years had not been what they were, had our president not been who he was, and had our country not become who it needed to become in the interim, we may have sabotaged our own big moment. The transcendence of an election like last night is so awesome, I am glad that we had nothing in the way of making it a reality.

Sure, the real work begins now, where promise is put into practice. No, it won't be easy---change never is. But for now, I want to step back and be grateful, smiling from ear-to-ear as I realize that America is, at this moment, right where it needs to be.