It’s the end of another Sunday, that day of rest for those of us that honor the Sabbath on this day.  As the evening draws around, I wanted to share some personal thoughts. We are engaged in the cause of preserving our children’s future, rooted in the family – the foundation of that free society – and fundamentally religious liberty.

It was such sobering and tragic news to learn of the fire that killed seven children in an Orthodox Jewish Sabbath fire on Saturday, March 21, 2015.  As a mother of five myself, I cannot fathom the overwhelming grief the surviving father must feel, now watching his wife and only remaining child – a 14 year old daughter – suffer in critical condition in the hospital from extensive burns.

First, the irony.  Orthodox Jewish religious tradition does not permit flames for cooking on the Sabbath.  Meanwhile, ISIS violence – as evidenced in videos of beheading and burning “infidels” alive in the Middle East, continued threats of terrorist attacks in the region – puts the cause of freedom into perspective in light of this faithful family’s loss.

Second, nothing is as precious as the life of a child, preservation of family and the bond they create through religious faith.  These children have lost their physical lives and the parents and remaining child will be emotionally scarred, but they have not lost their souls – not a single one of those seven children.  They were “pure” in the eyes of G-d as their father Gabriel Sassoon said.  Their faith will sustain this family.  I have utmost respect for my Orthodox Jewish friends and their religious traditions.  My prayers are with this family and a community in mourning.

That is a lesson for all of us.

We are surrounded by so much suffering, but our collective faith, whether Jew or Christian, tells us there is still a G-d and that He is in charge, that there is more beyond this life, and that we will have eternal peace if we are true to our faith. Our Divine Maker knows all, and there is a purpose to everything under heaven.

I thought it would be appropriate to quote from the translated Jewish bible Kohelet Chapter 3, sentiments shared by Christian and Jew alike:

Everything has an appointed season, and there is a time for every matter under the heaven.		אלַכֹּל זְמָן וְעֵת לְכָל חֵפֶץ תַּחַת הַשָּׁמָיִם:
2A time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot that which is planted.		בעֵת לָלֶדֶת וְעֵת לָמוּת עֵת לָטַעַת וְעֵת לַעֲקוֹר נָטוּעַ:
3A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break and a time to build.		געֵת לַהֲרוֹג וְעֵת לִרְפּוֹא עֵת לִפְרוֹץ וְעֵת לִבְנוֹת:
4A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time of wailing and a time of dancing.		דעֵת לִבְכּוֹת וְעֵת לִשְׂחוֹק עֵת סְפוֹד וְעֵת רְקוֹד:
5A time to cast stones and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.		העֵת לְהַשְׁלִיךְ אֲבָנִים וְעֵת כְּנוֹס אֲבָנִים עֵת לַחֲבוֹק וְעֵת לִרְחֹק מֵחַבֵּק:
6A time to seek and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away.		ועֵת לְבַקֵּשׁ וְעֵת לְאַבֵּד עֵת לִשְׁמוֹר וְעֵת לְהַשְׁלִיךְ:
7A time to rend and a time to sew; a time to be silent and a time to speak.		זעֵת לִקְרוֹעַ וְעֵת לִתְפּוֹר עֵת לַחֲשׁוֹת וְעֵת לְדַבֵּר:
8A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.		חעֵת לֶאֱהֹב וְעֵת לִשְׂנֹא עֵת מִלְחָמָה וְעֵת שָׁלוֹם:

 

Faith and Loss

No matter the sorrow, tragedy or the loss we may face, let us never, ever lose our faith.

I witnessed a miniscule slice of the Sassoon’s tragedy in my own family.  My mother lost her oldest son in an Air Force F-100 jet crash, his body also badly burned.  After a month-long search, his aircraft was found and his body recovered.  I was only about six years old, but for years I watched my faithful mother carry on with her life and do so much good for so many.  She was my role model and so involved in the early days of protecting Life and family.  On occasion in her solitude, I caught her weeping over that loss of her son.  Nothing is quite as difficult as the loss of a child.

The news of the Sassoon family’s loss became a metaphor.   I reflected on the losses experienced by those of us who have been fighting for the preservation of the family, marriage, a child’s need for both a mother and a father, and religious liberty.  The past two years have been stunningly swift in burning down these noble institutions under new, activist judge interpretations of the law.

Who would have imagined that Utah would be the first in a string of state-by-state cloned legal challenges?   Those of us who have sacrificed so much over the years are now in mourning these losses.  But we also know that God is in charge and that we will never give in.  We will be here tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, because it is not just the earthly physical lives of our children being harmed, but their eternal souls are under attack.

I received two notes this week from friends in this fight that brought me to tears.

One was a forward on a comment a former campaign worker mentioned of me – that I was feared by both men and women.  I was grateful that he was defending my “principled” approach, and that he was concerned that it may have been a reason for my loss when I ran for U.S. Senate in 2010.  No doubt there were many reasons, but I have no regrets that I spoke the truth and if I was “feared,” so be it.  As Jesus said in Matthew 13:9, “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Sometimes the truth is hard to hear and too many are hard of hearing.

Another comment was a heartfelt letter from a young woman who has joined the ranks of grassroots activists more recently and who has observed the onslaught of discouraging events that are destroying the civil rights of children in protecting their need to have both a mother and a father in a committed marriage relationship.

She wrote:

I’ve been pondering: It’s easy to make personal sacrifices to serve in our county and state when one knows one can make a difference for good. And if you know your team is winning, it’s even easier to want to join the team!

But what if one can’t make a difference for good because the majority supports the opposite? And what if your team keeps losing? What, then, IS the point of serving and sacrificing precious time with family? What’s the point of being sleep deprived with worry and concern and extra meetings and studying and research, and all the extra stress and responsibility, and feeling your health deteriorate, and seeing all the muck of dishonesty and hypocrisy up close in your face — even thrown IN your face??! Why, then, would I or anyone want to serve in my community, state, and/or country?

I’ve concluded (and must keep remembering) that men and women who truly know and love God, family, and this country won’t give up.

They physically can’t sit down and watch from the sidelines while others tear down God, family, and our country.

They have to be true to the inner voice inside them that insistently says, “YOU are on the right side! And you CAN make a difference!” even when we’re outnumbered, outmaneuvered, out-of-money, out-of-resources, out-of-time, out-of-every-last-drop-of-energy.

True Americans are true to correct principles even if they are not popular and the majority ignore them, mock them or twist them to their advantage.

True Americans are true to God first, and to serving Him, and to doing it His way simply because they know He’s always right, and that somehow it all works out in the end!

Our county, state, and nation need more true Americans like you to step up to the plate.

Thank you for stepping up to the plate over all these years and for being great examples to me.

Carry on! I’m following you!

Carry On

It’s true.  I am not engaged in this fight for Liberty because it’s fun or because I’m in a popularity contest for most likeable activist.  It’s not even what I had envisioned my life to be when I started out as a new bride, then a young mother raising five children.

I had always thought if I lived a good life and if I did the right things, or asked for forgiveness when I really messed up, the Lord would bless me and I’d spend my retiring years in contentment, playing with grandchildren on some Golden Pond somewhere in New Hampshire.

It’s been a different path. Not that the Lord hasn’t blessed me, but it has been a path full of bumps and stumbling blocks.  At times it looked as though I was on a dead end or even that I was falling off a cliff.

Today I’m either loved or hated for the views I express publicly.

The criticism comes sometimes even from friends and family, or those who only hear – or are influenced by – the news sound bites, opinions that almost always come from sources that either do not understand the issues, who cannot dig deeply enough into the crux of the point, or who actually believe the counterfeit arguments from a progressive media. It is sometimes daunting.

We all love to be on the winning team.  No one likes being a loser.  It’s a universal pursuit of happiness to succeed in an environment that supports success.

I come from a strong musical theatre background and have sung professionally for most of my adult life from Off-Broadway to National Tours to Regional Theatre and local community theatre.

One of the songs I sang from the 1970s was written by the masters of the Broadway showstoppers of the day – Kander and Ebb – called Maybe This Time.  “Everybody loves a winner,” the song goes.

When it comes to conservative policy in 2015, it appears we are losing, and as the lyrics continue: “so nobody loved me.”

How many times have I sat in the bleachers of a football game when the team I’m supporting is getting slaughtered?  It’s easy to criticize and to sideline quarterback. When one of my sons was out on that field in high school as a wide receiver, I understood more completely that real young men are out there playing an inner game of football.  The coaches are “building character,” we say, by teaching them not to give up –  even in the face of defeat – and how to turn the game around.

My own mother taught me to “take lemons and make lemonade.” At my first piano recital, I knew that song backwards and forwards, but as I sat at the piano bench my knees were knocking and my fingers shaking. I began, and not far into the song, I played a wrong chord. Five wrong tries later, I heard a desperate voice from the back of the audience, my mother, in a loud whisper: “Just go on.” And I did.

(I became a singer instead.)

But those three words “Just go on,” have made all the difference in my life.

How Shall We “Carry On?”

Although Utah’s marriage law was only one issue, it is the example for all issues.  We the People have allowed a single individual -a federal judge to unilaterally, without a hearing, strike down Utah’s constitutional law protecting marriage between a man and a woman in the false name of “civil rights.”

Why?  Because we have elected a majority of people who lack principle and who are of a weak character.

But whose “civil rights?”

In Australia, a socialist nation only a few steps farther down the road to serfdom from the United States,  abortion is a civil right, too.  Through its Medicare program, it’s “free.”

I’ll put it bluntly:  Australia has walked away from God’s law and has rewritten murder as a civil right.  When Roe v. Wade’s decision became the law of the land, we had lost.  We had to make a decision.  Do we pack up and go home and allow evil to win?

No.  Never.

The media would have you believe I and others who share the same view on principled governance are simply  “extremists.”  Even some of our “Republican” leaders in Utah call us “extremist” because we believe this nation has walked away from God and its once biblically-based jurisprudence.  We hear so much about “partisanship” and the need for “bipartisanship.”

What are they talking about?  How do you compromise between good and evil?  Compromise comes with the details of how to get something done, not the principles themselves.  When we ask for bi-partisan compromise and the issue is a moral issue, we are asking for those that believe the most to acquiesce to those who believe the least.  We then become  secular humanist in policy.  It is the tug of war between God and Caesar.  If you chart the direction this has been heading for decades, it will show a sharp loss of personal liberty and a huge gain in big government control.  Caesar is winning that war.

The loss of principled leadership brings a loss of liberty.  This is what compromising with evil does.

Now we have a strongly Republican Congress that is also blurry-eyed when it comes to principled leadership.  In short, we elected them to set this nation’s heart and soul right so that fiscal stability will follow (throughout history, it always does), and nothing is happening.  In fact, promises to stop the immorality of the redistribution of wealth in areas not enumerated to the federal government by forcing ObamaCare and Medicaid expansion (which uses taxpayer funds to support abortion), is a prime example.  Congress had the power of a check and balance on the US Supreme Court’s decision, but it went silent.

The inability of a Republican Congress to enforce the law on illegal immigration and to curtail the side effects of crime, drug cartels and the weakening of workforce wages defies its party platform.  To delay passage of a law to further restrict abortion, another party platform, is unconscionable.

This has not come at the hands of Democrats alone, but by the added support of Republicans.

This is not just problematic, it’s evidence that the Republican Party is merely a party of empty platitudes with candidates that are required to go through a Karl Rove sieve that has no intention of being that party of principle it once was.

Now talk show host Glenn Beck has announced he’s leaving the Republican Party.  As one who was for a short time on the top levels of a third party, I ask, just where will he go?  Our laws are crafted and guarded by the two parties that control the system.

My experience in a third party is that human nature will prevail unless the leadership of that party is principled.  The quest for power and unrighteous dominion over man’s free will is not necessarily overcome by establishing a third party.  Third parties on a national scale spend the majority of time simply getting ballot access, which wears volunteers down and impedes the ability to organize the candidate’s campaign.

What do we do then?

1. We do what we can to influence good wherever we are.  We do so because it is right, because it is God’s will, not man’s law, that governs our actions.  Our laws may turn against God’s law, and they have, but we still have the freedom to speak out, to act up, and to advocate for liberty.  Freedom isn’t free.

2. To our opponents I say:  Your liberty to do as you please, regardless of any moral standard, will continue to burn this nation’s house down and there will be a heavy price to pay to build it back up.

3. To the many leaders many stalwart leaders in the battle for the heart and soul of this nation who are feeling a deep loss and who are in mourning, I use my friend’s words:  “Carry on.”  The American founders consecrated all they had for liberty – their lives, fortunes and sacred honor.  They knew that religious liberty was so fundamental that they enshrined it as an unalienable right First and then ensured its protection in the Second Amendment – the right to bear arms.

May our prayers continue to be for the American people to wake up, for our hearts to turn back to God, for liberty to prevail.  We will not give up, even if we are temporarily “losing” and do not experience the immediate reward.  Because, as syndicated columnist Cal Thomas said many years ago, “I’ve read the Book, and in the end WE win!”

Here’s Jackie Evancho singing The Lord’s Prayer. It is my prayer that this performance by a 12 year old that has a gift from God will inspire you, and that it will keep this eternal perspective in view as we continue in this Good fight.  Win or lose, we will stay the course.