This year my son did something extraordinary, in fact you might call him one of the bravest men alive. Our oldest son J. Lee Miller Jr. ran for political office in Oklahoma, which in our political climate could be nothing short of self manslaughter. But my brave son took on a bigger challenge than most of us are willing to do because he believes in the right of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,  you know just that little thing, called the Declaration of Independence that our forefathers set forth as our “unalienable rights”, which the Declaration says has been given to all human beings by their creator, and which governments are created to protect, I guess that is why his campaign motto was Lee for Liberty.

So being the supportive family we are, Jeff and I headed to Tulsa to support our kid the day of the election. I thought we would all be sitting around resting just waiting for those polls to close, because I thought all the work was done. But nope! Not my kid! We were out the door as soon as he voted heading to the major intersections of the community standing on the corners holding signs and waving, now I feel I can safely say this was my workout for the day and probably for the year , since I am so athletic. In fact, I feel I developed an effective technique to sign holding and waving on street corners.  

The first position for the effective sign holding technique is:

1. You have your arm stretched all the way out waving with the wrist,
2. Once your arm gets tired doing that you lower it to halfway at the elbow and wave with your elbow
3. Once your arm starts hurting from that you go back to fully extended arm waving the whole arm this time from the shoulder
4. After about 15 mins of each of those positions you switch arms and do it all over again on the other side , all while holding a sign in the other hand and smiling.
5. Smiling might be the most important part and all of this must be done by looking engaged, at the car coming at you as if to tell the person in the car from the expression on your face “Hey, What a surprise!!  I wasn’t expecting you to be driving down the street today” and this must be done with the same excitement as you would see on your face as if you haven’t seen an old friend in a really long time!

I honestly don’t know how the queen does it although waving from a car at people while being driven down the road is probably easier than standing on the street corner for 6 plus hours and  I am sure you are probably wondering, “Well why didn’t you just take a lesson from the Queen and wave like she does” and I honestly tried that too but it was such a little wave, it didn’t and , couldn’t really engage the cars coming at us well enough to get their attention so that idea had to be scrapped immediately, apparently you don’t need to grab people’s attention when you are the queen but you do when you need their vote for a political party.

This years election got quite a few peoples attention and set a record number for voters in a non-presidential election all over the country. Many woke up the next morning unhappy and frustrated that their candidate did not get elected. You know, frustration and unhappiness can happen a lot, if we put our faith and trust in man. It is all too easy for us to look to humans for , help when the truth is our only true help come from the Lord. Does that mean if we look to Him we will get everything we want? No! But what we have to remember about any election or difficulty that come to us in life is that God is still in control.

The neat thing about last Wednesday morning, God didn’t wake up and say “What?? How did they get elected?”. No God appoints every authority, even the ones we don’t like. He is in control. The children of Israel in the bible didn’t like the pharaoh who had authority over them, but his hardened heart only opened the door for God to show His mighty  power to the children of Israel through the 10 plagues, , which by the way, never touched the children of Israel.

You may not have liked what the results of the election were but that doesn’t dismiss your responsibility of what God calls us to do and that is to pray for our newly elected officials. I didn’t say pray against them.  I said pray for them. Because the God who is in control has given you Life and the Liberty to pursue Him which will ultimately lead to the Happiness you are really looking for if we will follow God’s plan.

It is time we declare our Independence against fear, and worry of what the future holds and it is time to hold on to the one that holds our future in is hands and I promise you His arms never get tired.