Exercising your Democratic Demons- VOTE TODAY

I know, voting has little to nothing to do with my adoption, but exercising your right to vote has everything to do with being American. I encourage everyone to vote today AGAINST Amendment One. You might be thinking, "and you claim to be Christian?" You might be thinking, "that is against the sanctity of marriage". WRONG. It's for LOVE.  It's FOR the freedom of choice God gave us when he made us. It's FOR keeping insurance for children of gay parents and for men and women living together who aren't gay, also referred to as common law marriage. Let me explain this further for those of you who have not read up on the issue- many of us haven't until recently, myself included.

Say I lived with Sarah's father still. Thank God I had the guts to get away from his pathetic excuse for a human being self when I did. (Sarah was one, when I finally grew a set. I was encouraged by many friends, but Boyce was with me when we took his things to his parents house and finally said, "SIANARA SUCKA". Thank you Boyce.)We were never married. But we lived together for 3 horrible, long years. Do I sound jaded? I'm not really. I can tolerate him now. Anywho, if I had gotten in a serious car accident, and there was a decision to be made on my health, God forbid, if there was a decision to be made on my life vs pulling a plug, Paul would not have been able to make that decision even though we lived together if this amendment would have been passed. He would also not have been able to have the insurance that he did through my company. When he cut his hand really badly at work he wouldn't have been able to afford health care so he probably wouldn't have gone to the hospital for treatment. If this amendment passes there is a very good possibility that many people who have insurance- including MANY children, under current domestic partnership acknowledgements, could and very most likely will lose their insurance. This is a very real threat to many Americans. The reason that this could happen is like this:

Example: Ameriprise Financial acknowledges domestic partnerships currently. There are many AMPF employees who receive benefits through this acknowledgement. Shareholder #34 doesn't agree with this. He doesn't think it's fair that he is paying for insurance for a couple that is "not married". He decides to sue AMPF for going against the NC Constitution by allowing non-married couples insurance. Therefore, AMPF, nationally will cut all insurance for all domestic partnerships cutting thousands upon thousands of families their benefits. Imagine if that was you and your child has spinibifida. You and your child lose insurance. Now what? She goes to Medicaid? What kind of insurance is that? Is that top of the line care? I doubt it. Don't you want the best for your child? Yes. The answer is always yes if you are normal.

The amount of lawsuits that will spring up from this amendment will be devastating and cause a trickle down effect. This will back up the courts. This will cause loss of productivity. This will cause longer wait times on hold with your insurance company (an insignificant value, but an effect nonetheless). This will cause inflation because so many people will not be able to afford quality health care, and will be looking to Medicaid for support. This will cause taxes to increase. This is devastating to the country. I didn't touch on many other reasons.

This amendment is also discriminatory. It screams, "We don't care about you. You are not worth as much as we are." It's demoralizing, and downright wrong.

There are so many reasons I'm voting against the amendment.

But...one of the main reasons I'm voting against this Amendment is this: I don't believe that GOD himself would vote for this Amendment. I think it's not something that he's pouring over. He is not worried about who loves who. He's probably more concerned about who doesn't love who- and that's what this amendment is about. It's about division. It's judgemental. It's not understanding of others. It's not loving. It's not fair. It's also not fair for the government to decide what marriage should be. I don't want Uncle Sam telling me which church to go to or what Bible to read. I certainly don't want them deciding who should be allowed to be married and who shouldn't.

I love the Lord, and I am voting AGAINST AMENDMENT ONE.

Even if you don't agree with me- you should at least put your two cents in by voting. Stand up for your right to vote.

I anticipate this will have a higher voter turn out than the presidential primaries did. Gay people make up a VERY LARGE portion of society. Don't leave them in the cold. Unmarried couples living together with children make up an even larger portion of society. You most likely know at least one in each category. Do you not care about their rights? Are they not as good as you? Don't be a judge when we both know there is only one real judge.

Feeling Christine Caine inspired

I've been attending Elevation Church for a few years now. I can't say anything bad about it- not one thing. Each time I walk out of those double doors, Sarah trailing behind me or in tow on my hip, I can't help but feel rejuvenated. If I tried to deny it, I would be a fool. If I tried to understand why God does the things He does, I would be an idiot.
So why do I have a hard time believing He will fulfill His promises? I know that I'm the one to blame for this inadequacy in myself, and that He will always be there to protect and love me, no matter how I screw up. And believe me when I say this, I screw up a lot. I think that's fairly humanistic.
I attended the CodeOrangeRevival last night to see Christine Caine, and I was lucky enough to have been asked to sit on stage, a new thing that Pastor Steven felt would be encouraging for him and the other preachers. Some of them are traveling the globe to be here, in Charlotte, NC, and have set aside their families and churches to be able to speak the word to our church. For that, I feel very thankful, along with the other thousands of Elevators in our city and across the globe.
When I say globe, I am not embellishing. There is one pastor, in particular, who came all the way from Australia to be with us. Her name is Pastor Christine Caine. She is an inspiration to womanhood. She leads and speaks with passion and takes human rights very seriously. Having started a campaign called A21, Christine Caine is nothing shy of extraordinary, although I feel she would never admit that.
A21 is a campaign against human trafficking. There is a shelter set up in Greece as a safe haven for trafficked women that offers safety, comfort, medical attention, financial help with college studies, psychological care and a place where the victims can be restored with the love that God has for them. She took this challenge on with her faith in God, and with the knowledge that God can do anything, and to quote scripture, "through Him all things are made."
Why can't I take that thought, that all- withstanding truth, and apply it to my own life? I trust Him with my finances, for the most part anyway. He has always come through, and I have never gone without in that regard. I trust him with my health. I have had what some might call, some pretty bad scares in my life, but I have reemerged unscathed.
In fact, just last week, I had talked myself into believing that I had some kind of tumor on my cervix. I was freaking out and went to the doctor only to find that what I was feeling in that woman part of mine, was in fact my cervix. But as I was sitting in the doctor's room, very vulnerable, very unsure, very worrisome to the point of tears, I looked over to my left. And there, sitting in the magazine rack right in the very front pocket was a children's Bible. You know that Bible. It has the enlarged B for Bible, and with it's hardback blue cover, so familiar to me, I guess because I had seen it over the years at various offices of sorts, usually doctor's offices, as I recall. Its original print date was probably 1972, but the Bible doesn't have updated editions, so what real difference does it make to have one that has a more recent picture or one of a woman wearing an Afro and bell bottoms?
I picked it up and opened it to whatever page it landed on, like many of us thoughtlessly do, which I've been told is probably not the right way to read the Bible, because when we open it up and expect that we have opened it up to the page that God wants to speak to us through, we are giving ourselves the credit, when really the credit should always be given to Him.
Irregardless, the page that it happened to land on, the page that gave me comfort at a time that I needed it most, in that instance anyway, was Genesis. I think it's a fair assumption that most believers and non-believers know what story that is. It's the story of Adam and Eve. It's the story that describes the beginning of time, the creation story, and the story that forced humankind into the labors of life that we will constantly toil with. But the end of that particular story, and even still there has not been a true end to God's story, and never will be, I might add, gives birth to hope. It shows God's infinite love for us, and reminds us that even though we screw up, He will always love us. It never says we won't be punished for our actions. We will be. That's life on Earth, and maybe in Heaven, but I haven't been there yet to be able to write about it.
The point that I got lost on though, while thinking about everything that has recently transpired in my life, is that I don't truth Him enough. I don't trust that He will do what He promises. The only way that I know I will be able to do that, is by exalting Him, and through surrender. No one more than me hates the idea of surrender. Surrender? I'm not doing that. That means I have to give up? No way. I am all in, all the time. I refuse to say that I lost, another common denominator of humans. We are fighters. We are finishers. We are competitive by nature, even those of us who falsely, yet profusely proclaim that we aren't.
I need to try to learn that in His time, my life will come together. And the thing is, humans created time, not God. We put a ticker on everything, like Pastor Christine said last night. I stand guilty as charged.
We think that we are the deciders of fate. How presumptuous of us, how inflated, how inequitable.
This is where I start to stumble. If we are to wait on God, to let Him lead our lives, then how can I be proactive? I've always been told by my Mom that God helps those who help themselves. So how am I to know when I am not helping myself?
Is being on Match.com against the rules? Should I be patiently waiting on God to bring me a man instead of putting my antennae out there? I struggle with that sometimes. I want to have a man in my life that loves me, that I can love, but more importantly who loves God just as much as me, if not more. I haven't had any luck thus far. It's been about 5 months, and I'm about to cash in on their 6 month guarantee. You watch.
I believe that He is working on me still. He knows that I'm not at a point in my life that I can fully give someone else the love they need, and I am not fully capable to receive it. Some might think they are, and they stay in these destructive relationships for years, ignoring the obvious because they are too afraid to be alone. They don't want to start over. It's pretty scary to start over for most people, me included. I stayed in a loveless relationship for 6 years of my life. Then went on to another for another 3 years. For what? All because I was too afraid that my heart might hurt a little? My schedule might change? My child will miss him? There's a common excuse for many people. But the fact about that is this. Kids are resilient, much more than adults are. They forget quicker, and they don't understand the ramifications of a break-up because they don't know what true love is. So using that as an excuse is lame. Sorry to say it. The effects of staying in an unloving relationship until your kids grow up and are able to understand what true love is, is far more damaging and will require much more psychological attention in the long run.
I was concerned that my circle of friends would be broken, and it was. I was worried that I wouldn't do the same unGodly things that I did, you know what I'm talking about here, and I didn't. Let's be honest here. It's not sex that we crave. It's love. It's someone who cares about your well being. It's knowing that someone is there for you when you fall on your face. It's having someone help you brush yourself off and boost you up when you are too timid to try again. I crave that. I don't crave sex, and God tells us that sex before marriage is not the way. He doesn't say that there won't be incredible temptation. He doesn't say that it doesn't feel good. It does; we all know it does.
I'm trying to help myself trust Him more with everything in my being. Sex is something that, like most people, married and single, I like. And knowing that He doesn't want me to do it before I get married makes it even harder to do it. It makes it unpleasant even, when normally it would be great. I'm not speaking of anything recent here, just saying that since I have really started injecting God's word into my life, I have been a changed woman. I make better decisions. I think more logically. And I trust Him certainly more than I ever did. As soon as I can fully surrender to Him, I will be in much better shape though. I'm looking to make myself better, and in the process help a few others make themselves better.

Thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate every one's active interest in what little ole Brooke has to say.