Jan 21, 2017
A New Chapter for the Possible
I remember the night the Obamas won the 2008 election. I’d snuck out into the hallway of the community centre where I was living with my four children. It was late and they were fast asleep but I was excited. I’d wanted to see this couple who had taken on the mammoth task to be the first. The first black president of the United States.
As someone who loves media, I was thrilled that I could watch history happen live from my laptop. I am forever grateful for computers, internet and Wi-Fi.
Watching them take the stage with their little girls and waving to the crowd of supporters was awe inspiring. They had done it.
It filled me with hope. The kind of hope President Obama spoke about in his book the Audacity of Hope. The kind that I’d read about in an Oprah magazine article about them as they considered the implications of running for the highest office in the USA and in many eyes, the world. The kind of hope I needed to have if I was going to change my current situation.
My children and I were homeless. I had no steady income and I was feeling forgotten. I needed to believe that things would change.
That night, as I watched the victory speeches while periodically checking on my children, eight and under, I wondered how I could make the dreams in my head happen. Many saw the Obamas as representative of the answer but I didn’t think they were. They were just a light pointing in the direction of hope. A firework display of promise that if we dared to hope and did the work we too could win.
I only scanned the 2016 US election coverage and dreaded the idea that someone so counter to all of what this lovely couple represented would take over. I didn’t expect to cry as they said farewell at the air force base to family and friends. I was sad, relieved, happy all at once and the tears fell.
I’m no longer in a community centre, needing the kindness of friends and strangers to feed my children. We’ve come a long way since then and have been through more challenges but also many successes. Their farewell was one for me as well.
Their leaving is not a signal of the end but the beginning of a new season for more of what can be possible. More opportunities to hope, to believe that with faith and doing the work we can make it. Our answers don’t lie in another human being outside of ourselves. God is still supreme and His desire is that each of us win in this journey. It’s not about winning over someone else but winning and becoming who He purposed for us to be.
This is a new chapter. A new opportunity for that fabulous couple who let us into their lives to grow even more. How am I going to use this new chapter? What are you going to write on that blank page called your life?
