Prepare Your heart, America

Election Day is almost here.

As I put pen to paper Sen. Barack Obama is ahead by 7 percent. It is time for Americans to prepare our hearts so that, whoever wins, we will support our next president in prayer.

As Benjamin Franklin once observed, "If we don't hang together, we will surely hang separately." Much of the world is being gobbled up by socialism and/or Islam. We must never give up our destiny-to remain that shining city on a hill. It is the view of American exceptionalism that must unite America once again. Clearly 30 percent of the electorate is composed of rock-ribbed Republicans. There are at least that many Democrats in the left wing coalition. These Americans embrace their belief system with a religious fervor. In fact, they are the wheat and the tares Jesus referenced in Matthew 13:25, but that's a topic for another day.

Today, we must all prepare ourselves, in our thinking, to support our next president for the good of our country. The divisiveness of this election cycle will be difficult to overcome. I recall the moment I committed my life to Jesus Christ, in a prayer meeting as a young woman. In those days we used to sing this song with gusto: "I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back." Fifteen years later my husband and I had dinner with the priest who had presided over those prayer meetings. It had been during the days of the Catholic Charismatic Movement. "Are you still on fire for Jesus?" he inquired. "Absolutely," I responded.

In today's parlance, my dedication to the Lord was a game changer. I never looked back. I never even wanted to. That single-mindedness would stand me in good stead 10 years later when my husband suffered a massive stroke. As he collapsed on the floor, he was bleeding into his brain. I remember that Friday night so clearly. We were watching a Chicago Bulls playoff game. The rest of the summer was a blur. The ambulance, Emergency Room, off to X-ray for a cat scan-an entire month in ICU hovering between life and death. We realized later he had suffered the stroke on the very day his own father had died of a stroke 49 years earlier.

Only my husband didn't die. After ICU it was two months in a rehab hospital. Then it was time to roll out the wheelchair and bring him home. I suddenly realized all the work done by nurses, their aides, occupational therapists and dieticians would now be assigned to me. It was daunting.

It helped me to recall the words evangelist Joyce Meyer said God had spoken to her at a difficult time in her own life: "I never said it would be easy; I never said it would be fair. I just said you would overcome." We need to appropriate those same words today.

The point is, we cannot always control our circumstances and life isn't fair. However we still are the arbiters of our own decisions. Thus, we need to love America more than we hate the other political party. The next president will still be the president of all the people.

It will be difficult to adjust in this present milieu. Therefore, we must purpose in our hearts, before the fact, that we will remain loyal American patriots. In the words of our own national anthem: "For our cause, it is just. And this be our motto, 'In God be our trust.'"

God is returning us to our destiny.