“After we fast, I will go to the king. I know it is against the law to go to the king if he didn’t call me, but I will do it anyway. If I die, I die.” Esther 4:16. This is biblical text spoken by queen Esther to her adoptive father and mentor, Mordecai, probably between 400 and 150 BCE.

I’m no queen and I’m probably not going to die, but I can relate to Esther’s situation. “I’m going to do something that people won’t like, but I’ll take my chances because the stakes are so high. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.”

As you know, I’ve come against former president Trump. So many people see the Promised Land in him. I see an iceberg. I’ve been laughed at and screamed at, but to me, it’s worth all that.

A while back, I started noticing that people were reading from different playbooks, so I started calling on sources. (That made some people really mad!) But by now, I hope everyone knows that non-citizens can’t vote (www.usa.gov) and that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, according to the Supreme Court. (www.americanbar.org). I feared that some hadn’t known those things because of their sources, and to me, that was worth waving my arms over. (And fyi, I keep up pretty well with original source material on Trump’s side too, i.e., his words and agenda.)

So I feel like I’ve done what I’m supposed to do. I’m not particularly courageous; I just see things differently than how a lot of my family and friends see them. That hasn’t made me popular, but I guess I never signed up for popularity in the first place. 

I  very much understand the desires of my family and friends to vote for conservative policy. I share many of their views. I draw inspiration from non-MAGA conservatives and people like the Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today, Russell Moore. We all read the same teachings of Jesus. Some of us just come up with a different viewpoint on this matter of voting. But in the end, if we’re all voting our viewpoint and have counted the cost, that’s what democracy is all about.