I’m exhausted.

It’s Sunday evening. My husband was gone all weekend, hunting, and our son and I were running back and forth doing a number of things. We lunched with the grandparents, I gave devotions at the food pantry at our former church (where I volunteered before we were members, and am praying about continuing after fulfilling my commitment this calendar year), attended tailgating and the senior day for my foster brother’s final college football game, went to Sunday School and church, and then I canned 25+ jars of applesauce.

But really, I’m emotionally exhausted. Restraining myself from answering every stupid thing I read on social media is hard for me, to be brutally honest. Social justice is not an entire theology anyone should fashion their lives around. Does Christianity lead to social justice? It should, but if you aren’t really a Christian in the first place, starting with social justice won’t get you anywhere – you’re still a slave to the flesh, making self-centered sinful decisions.

I am especially struggling with people who are making ridiculous parenting decisions in light of the recent election. This past week has done much in reminding me that infertility is monumentally unfair. *I* had to get permission from numerous people and take extensive classes to be a mother, and hundreds of thousands of idiots are raising children with little to no thought about the little lives they’re shaping.

I’m exhausted because, while I didn’t vote for any of the three major candidates, I know it is now my Christian responsibility to pray for the ones who won. Why is that exhausting? Because I deeply believe our nation is under judgment from God. It is obvious that the President-Elect is not a Christian – he is bearing absolutely no fruit in keeping with repentance. I don’t believe he was elected to turn America into a Christian nation (further, I don’t believe we ever were a Christian nation – just one founded on a few biblical principles). Because I believe God is about to judge our nation, I have to hang on, trust Him, and…again…not respond to every ridiculous thing I see people say on social media.

I’m exhausted because my husband and I, along with my mother, are the only Christians in our family. That’s lonely, and this week, it’s almost been polarizing. The sheer amount of hatred, racism, and ignorance coming from multiple family members this week has been staggering. I’m almost dreading Thanksgiving, which is normally my favorite holiday, because usually there’s no family drama involved. But this year? I don’t know.

Here’s what I do know.

Those of us who are Christians? Those of us who have been washed in the blood and understand that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling? We have two primary responsibilities before we even begin to think about opening our mouths or posting on social media these days:

1. Pray
2. Read our Bibles.

The amount of time I have spent in prayer the past week is probably, to some, ridiculous. And most of it has been of the, “Dear Lord, please don’t let me say anything I regret” category. Also there has been a lot of the “Dear Lord, help me right now explain this to my child” type of prayer offered up. I’d say I can’t imagine how people are coping with the world right now without prayer, except, I can, because their images are splashed all over the news as they throw rocks at police, and they whine all over facebook about the electoral college.

Christian sister, you need to be in prayer. I need to be in prayer. We need to pray for our country,  for our elected officials (the current ones, the elected ones yet to take office, the ones who didn’t win, from the dog-catcher on up to the President). We need to pray foremost for their salvation; image what would happen if our elected officials actually were saved by the blood of the Lamb, and they lived their lives like it! We need to pray for each other, especially the people we don’t understand.

(I don’t understand people who get all of their news without doing any research of their own. I mean, for crying out loud, it’s almost 2017, and almost everything is public knowledge with a little effort. Why believe anything you see, hear, or read without verifying it first? Come on, people….use your head for something other than holding a hat!)

We need to pray for our children – imagine the future they have. If God is bringing judgment, it’s going to get worse. We need to pray for our children’s salvation. We need to pray for the men in our churches to step up, stand up, lead. We need to pray for our pastors to be bold, speak the Truth, ignore the pressure to be social justice warriors. We need to pray for ourselves – to be bold, to be good wives, mothers, effective teachers of other women, to rightly handle the Word of God.

We also need to be in God’s Word, as often as possible. I find myself not in it as much as I should be. I listen to good teaching, read good theology books, and read good blogs, but that’s not enough. I need to be in God’s Word far more often so I am ready to recall it at a second’s notice. We need to be so grounded in God’s Word that we recognize falsehood, know Truth, immediately  make good decisions, can share Truth without hesitation, and our ears don’t itch. We need to be memorizing God’s Word, hiding it in our hearts, because what if…what if Bibles do get taken away or outlawed or some such nonsense?

Dear sisters…I have a feeling the next two months will be some of the hardest any of us ever experienced (but I’m only 41…some of you older ladies might disagree!). Our faith will be tested by our friends, our family, even our churches…. The past few weeks were only the beginning. Are you ready? Let’s just…pray.