My Friend

So there has been a bit of drama about my previous post on voting—some in the comments on this blog, as you’ve seen, and some outside of the internet. Most of which I don’t care about, but my friend’s feelings were hurt, and I definitely care about that. So I’m writing to give an update on that situation.

The first thing to report, which is the less important part, is that she has decided to vote. (I won’t tell you who she’s voting for, in case she’s not making it public...)

The second thing is much more important: I’m very proud of her, and the way she handled the whole thing. Although her feelings were hurt, she handled the situation with maturity, and with a Christian heart that put me to shame. She came to me (on Messenger) to talk about it, and we had a good long, rational conversation. Of course it wasn’t devoid of emotion—her feelings were hurt, after all—but man was I impressed with the way she handled herself. She was able to acknowledge her emotions, and discuss them, without being ruled by them.

As I said, the fact that she decided to vote isn’t the important thing—this isn’t a case where “I won the argument, so therefore she did the right thing”—but the fact that she could look past her emotions, and still make that kind of decision... how many of us would have done that? How many of us would have said “well, this person just hurt my feelings, but let me try to understand what he’s saying anyway”?

I think most of us could learn a thing or two from her. I hope I did...