Forecasting the future

On civil rights and the process of finding Jesus while panicking over the powers that be

Did anyone else find it strange that the Presidential Inauguration fell on MLK day? It felt like a deliberate contrast—two very different ways of being in the world on exhibition at once.

Instead of watching the Inauguration, I purposefully signed-up to go whale watching (to be clear, not the tycoons, but the marine mammals). Not only did we immediately see two humpbacks, one which was pregnant, but we also found a massive sunfish and a few varieties of dolphins. Staying offline and out in nature was a good choice for me.

The forecast

The weather was supposed to be in the fifties, which is cold for us San Diegans. I was prepared with many layers. Experience has taught me that being out on a gray and windy sea will pull the chill right into my bones. But the forecast wasn’t on point. Instead, the morning was bright and sunny, haze from wildfires far on the horizon.

The beauty felt incongruous with the world as I’m aware of it.

I’ve heard so many different forecasts for the state of our country. But I have to remind myself that meteorologists—whether political commentators or anyone who foretells and prophesies—can misread the signs.

Too much to hold

I’ve felt heavy most of this last week. I typically avoid getting sucked up in the news, but this week I’ve felt compelled to log onto it more than was good for me. Whether it was ensuring the ceasefire in Palestine/Israel was being carried out, to grasp the basics around the crises occurring throughout the continent of Africa, trying to figure out why South Korean President Yoon insisted on martial law, reading the actual text of the Equal Rights Amendment, or trying to figure out social media/TikToc drama to fact-check my teens—there was a lot.

They are a series of waves, each breaker big enough to be a game changer on its own. Yet together they swirl as an eddy that could easily suck us under.

I jump away before it is too late, but that doesn’t keep me untainted.

Abraham vs. Lot

Once I debated with a fellow leader about “settling” in Sodom and Gomorrah. I used Lot as an example of being a light in a prideful and exploitative place until it had no possibility for redemption.¹ He quickly pointed out that this family wasn’t untouched by the culture they lived within. They experienced consequences.

There are a few differences between Lot and his uncle Abraham. For one, when given a choice, Abraham let Lot choose the rich and fertile area to settle. In doing so, Abraham had to have faith in God’s provision. He then went on to face a series of experiences that began to test his trust in God (some of which he definitely didn’t pass with flying colors). And yet he grew wealthy and gained respect from the regional powers. In the meantime, Lot was taken captive because of where he chose to live and had to be rescued by Abraham.

Sometimes the place that externally looks the most likely to help us flourish us isn’t actually what is best for us.

Receiving warning

Fast forward a little further: Both Lot and Abraham were given a word that foretold the future—that Sodom and Gomorrah would be destroyed. And yet they each received it differently. By then, Abraham had developed an intimacy with God that invited him to boldly negotiate on behalf of others.

The response on Lot’s side was very different. Part of his family took it as a joke and Lot’s negotiations were with morality deprived people, offering to rape his daughters instead of the angels (who does that?). Lot also negotiated to stay as close as possible to this region and he had to physically be pulled out at the last minute. In case that wasn’t enough, his wife turned back and was killed, and his daughters eventually felt they had no recourse but to sleep with him to produce offspring.

As we contrast these two characters, the differences between them and their experiences become glaring. What are the morals of this story? And how do these serve us now?

Will the real Martin Luther King Jr. please stand up?

Despite my long years of advocacy work, I stayed on the surface level on MLK Day. I would “celebrate” civil rights and briefly talk about racial equality to my kids or teach them in my class. At some point I started to feel like a hypocrite. I wanted to actually know what the real Dr. King was saying.

Have you actually ever read any of his work? Specifically his sermons or letters to Christian leaders, especially White ones? A couple years ago I finally read some of these and listened to Letters From Birmingham Jail on a short airplane ride. Oh my. No wonder as much as 75% of the American population²—both Black and White—didn’t like him.

It is a potent reminder that popularity doesn’t necessarily win the battle, let alone the war.

Conviction

My daughter turned to me in a church service, whispering, “Mom, what does “convicted” mean again?” Later in the day she excitedly talked about how she was challenged by the message—“He called us out!”

That phrase made sense to me. When the Spirit of God “calls us out” it is coupled with gracious understanding. He also always simultaneously invites into a new way of thinking, being, and acting. This is where the Kingdom of God begins—on the inside as recalibration, alignment, and formation.

Take My Hand

“Called out” was how I felt when I read Dr. King’s work. To a degree, it’s also how I felt when I finished the novel, Take My Hand this weekend. Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is a well-written historical fiction about a nurse who discovered that some of her patients, ages twelve and fourteen, were forcibly sterilized—just like thousands of others around the country.

This narrative touches tough conversations about civil rights, poverty, welfare, reproductive rights, and mistrust between those who want to help. It also engaged in a topic I really appreciated—saviorism—questioning where boundaries begin and end while walking alongside others.³ I related to the main character, Civil. But unlike her, I don’t want to wait until I am in my seventies⁴ to deal with my own trauma and difficulties of living in a broken world.

Measured intake

I had to approach this book slowly because I needed the time to process it in a healthy way. I have a history of taking the sorrow of the world and responding to it with unhealthy guilt, shame, and rage at injustice.

Conviction, sorrow, and shame can easily be mistaken for each other. Even pure conviction coupled with a degree of pressure, like an untrue thought, can morph into a dangerous monster. How much of our fight for civil liberties are driven by what initially began as conviction for what is right, good, and for the flourishing of all? But somewhere along the way shifted into something fallen short of ideal?

These days, I intentionally move through certain genres of stories, news, and experiences at a measured pace. I need the time I need to sift through what is happening inside me in order to align with truth.

Panic is a clue

Last week I had a panic attack that caught me off guard. I also started having flashbacks around a specific set of memories around my c-section with Kai (that story is here), but the flashbacks weren’t the context of this panic attack. Rather, it was in response to an essay I read about the current state of the world—or more specifically, the type of male leaders who are now at its helm.

I know I have some trust issues with male leaders. You’ve probably picked up on this if you’ve read any of my essays. I haven’t hid the healing process I’ve gone through as a woman who has had some very negative, if not abusive, experiences under male authoritarian leaders.

I felt confounded that my nervous system threw my body into an actual physical panic attack over something as vast as a new set of political leaders. This felt like an extreme response, even for me.

My therapist always tells me that panic is a cue that there is more healing available. And I wanted that healing.

The powers that be

We live within systems that control us, move us, require of us, squelch us, and try to define us. Whether Independent, Republican, or Democrat—all are trying to obtain or hold to their civil rights under the systems and powers that be. The only questions politics present to us is which of these civil rights will matter the most to us, who they should be available to, and how they should be received.

Answering these questions is always a messy process. People break up relationships over many of these civil rights. The ones we cling to the most define us. Others feel certain rights are worth going to war for.

The Kingdom of God

Power dynamics are a consistent theme in the Bible. The Hebrew people themselves toggled back and forth between being oppressors and the oppressed. There is also that new system, the “Kingdom of God,” that is a running theme through the Bible’s narrative.

This one I love; it is why I follow Jesus in the first place. I try to practice this way of God as I live out my days. And yet this is also the most challenging part of being a Christian. Not only is it hard to know what this looks like in the day-to-day, but the way of God’s Kingdom is also so frequently in contradiction to human-designed governments.

Not that I think Martin Luther King Jr. had this Kingdom of God totally figured out either, but no wonder he was despised by so many before he was murdered. I wonder if that is why he seemed to have a premonition that he might shortly die. Or was that the trauma he’d gone through forecasting the future?

Patrick Henry

I’ve been helping one of my kids prepare for an event called “Walk Through The American Revolution,” where he role-plays Patrick Henry.

I used to admire Patrick Henry’s fervor, “give me liberty or give me death!” Now, not so much. I try to imagine what I’d feel if many of my own civil freedoms were taken—having to host soldiers or pay taxes without representation. What would it take to put me on the warpath? Or would have chosen the nonviolence of yet unborn Dr. King? Again, these leaders stand in stark contrast.

Deeper healing

Over the past few months, instead of EMDR or other classic trauma-modalities I’ve employed, my therapist and I have been practicing something else that has helped me exponentially. Call it hokey if you like—I don’t care. It has been a game changer in my healing. We ask Jesus to meet me in my traumatic memories.

This week I came to therapy biting my finger nails with two different struggles—too many flashbacks and my panicked response to our new administration. After talking for a bit, and switching our focus on the trauma memory, my therapist led me in prayer. Then we expectantly waited for God to show up in this unconventional way.

Sacrificing autonomy

It was a scene that has seared itself into my nervous system, mind, and soul. I was coerced by doctors, fully physically dependent on other humans, and torn from my safe person without warning. I was physically harmed—both by medical professionals doing their jobs and by my body’s own misguided autoimmune response. I was spread out and strapped down in total vulnerability, with no dignity, my body uncovered and manipulated. I was too aware of the minimal autonomy and recourse I held. It didn’t matter that medical trauma isn’t abuse—I felt abused and violated.

Nearly three years later, as my therapist and I sought God together, a new awareness rapidly began to bloom inside of my memory. I hadn’t been alone over the span of those terror-filled traumatic hours. I could finally see that God was with me the whole time.

And although that was wonderful, I also heard his whisper acknowledging what I sacrificed for the sake of my child’s life. Although my personal rights and needs were ripped away, just like my baby was immediately ripped from my womb—I was able to honor and grieve that loss and understand the root of my fear.

Personal trauma isn’t the best fortune-teller

There are other parts of this story that I’m not sharing here, but at some point in this session it became evident that this particular flashback and my panic about being under the new political administration were actually tied together.

My personal trauma has been trying to predict the future. I might not have been abused a few years ago, but I’ve still had distinct negative experiences where my autonomy was oppressed, I was in danger, and my body was badly injured—things that were mostly carried out by strong men in power who I didn’t know or trust.

But my narrative fixates on only part of the story. A woman doctor who I generally felt safe with was actually directing the operation, even if she wasn’t yet present. The men in the operation room were only allowed in there with her permission. Their hands were tied by the limits of her invisible authority.

One of them, the anesthesiologist, was actually hyper-aware of what I was feeling. He acted as an advocate and comfort, meeting the needs he could. My husband was eventually brought in and even though I don’t remember it, he probably held my hand. I didn’t have much agency, and yet I could have done a few things to protect myself if the situation got even worse.

This wider perspective doesn’t reduce the trauma I went through. But it does help me see that I had been missing part of the narrative. Specifically and importantly, it was part of the story that could help me feel safer and less taken advantage of. God recalibrated me in the most gracious and helpful way possible.

Our choo choo trains

A long time ago I talked with another therapist who said our brain latches negative experiences together and divines them into stereotypes. They become like train cars, linked together and attached to the locomotive. The more boxcars there are, the heavier the train is, making it harder to stop.

It became painfully obvious this week how much of my past informs my beliefs about the world at large. I wonder if you might do the same thing, even though I suspect your trains are different colors, shapes, and carry different experiences.

You probably voted for who you voted for based on these trains. You probably care about the civil rights you care about because of your trains. You probably unwillingly panic, choose to fight, and decide what land to settle in based on the trains running in the background through your mind.

Forecasting hope

As my panic attack severely escalated, I began doing the things that help: deep breathing, grounding exercises, and tapping on my vagus nerve. But because of how my brain was spinning a version of catastrophic foretelling, “you’re in danger, you’re unsafe, you’'ll have no choice nor autonomy—you and your family are going to die…” I knew I needed some truth and comfort to latch onto.

I turned over in my bed, grabbed my phone, and opened my Bible app to the Psalms. The stanzas of praise and gratitude began to soothe me. What I really needed was a new forecasting of the future. That’s when these lines popped:

¹⁰ The Lord frustrates the plans of the nations
and thwarts all their schemes.
¹¹ But the Lord’s plans stand firm forever;
his intentions can never be shaken.

¹² What joy for the nation whose God is the Lord,
whose people he has chosen as his inheritance.

¹³ The Lord looks down from heaven
and sees the whole human race.
¹⁴ From his throne he observes
all who live on the earth.
¹⁵ He made their hearts,
so he understands everything they do.
¹⁶ The best-equipped army cannot save a king,
nor is great strength enough to save a warrior.
¹⁷ Don’t count on your warhorse to give you victory—
for all its strength, it cannot save you.

¹⁸ But the Lord watches over those who fear him,
those who rely on his unfailing love.
¹⁹ He rescues them from death
and keeps them alive in times of famine.

²⁰ We put our hope in the Lord.
He is our help and our shield.
²¹ In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.
²² Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord,
for our hope is in you alone.

Sometimes I wonder if I am more like Lot, living a hopeful and prosperous life, while inching towards complacency among a prideful, gluttonous, and lazy people who act detestably and don’t care for the poor and needy. I don’t want to be unbelieving here when God speaks, nor do I want to just saved by the skin of my teeth, going on to a shriveled life.

And then I read passages like the Psalm above and I remember that what set Abraham and Lot apart more than anything else was faith. Abraham believed in provision when none was visible. He had faith that he’d someday find a homeland where he wandered. He trusted that God would keep his promise to give him an impossible heir and that he’d have a legacy of good that would bless all the people of earth.

Abraham believed in that new system, the Kingdom of God, of which I also belong to and am destined to inherit. So as I look at our land led by leaders I don’t trust, my civil rights at risk, I can turn my eyes to the one who has already been with me through danger and chaos. He is the one who can both frustrate the plans of nations. And he is the one who meets me in my flashback memories. God is more powerful than any king who stands above my vulnerabilities.

Need I go on? Of all the forecasts of the future, this one alone gives me hope. And I wonder if it meets you where you are with hope, too.

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1. “Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door. She was proud and committed detestable sins, so I wiped her out, as you have seen.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50 NLT)

2. Retrieved 1.23.25 from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-martin-luther-king-had-75-percent-disapproval-rating-year-he-died-180968664/

3. If you are interested in conversations about Changemaking, everything related to how we respond to the world to make it better and pursue justice and goodness—be sure you are part of my monthly

The Table - Average Advocate

4. Although if you are in your seventies and just beginning to deal with your life trauma, I both respect and applaud you! I can’t begin to imagine the weight of the life you’ve carried. I pray you find more freedom than you’ve ever dreamed is possible!