I have hoped for a female on the Presidential ballot since 1992.
My amazing mother brought me to the polling booth when she voted for President in that election. I was just over 3 years old, and as my mom engaged me in what she was doing, she told me the choices we had were Ross, Bill, and George.
“No girls?”
No girls, indeed.
Yes, I have hoped for a female President since the age of three. It is possible that I will see a female President in my lifetime, and as someone who works closely with women of all ages day in and day out, there are some things I see that women are in great need of…and there are attributes I pray that our first female President, whenever she may be elected, possesses.
"Women naturally seek to embrace that which is living, personal, and whole. To cherish, guard, protect, nourish, and advance growth is her natural, maternal yearning." -Edith Stein
This is my hope.
I hope that our first female President represents America well, and most importantly represents who we are as women very well.
I hope that the first female President is one who champions what women were created for - love. We were made to love, nurture, and care for others - it is woven into the fabric of our God-given DNA. We cannot deny it or escape it. We have “maternal instincts,” which, when encouraged and cultivated properly, have an extremely beautiful impact on the world around us. Women come to life when they are able to carry out their natural longings - when we are encouraged to live compassion and selflessness and grace. We need women who have come alive - not women trying to compete, trying to push, trying to fight - but women alive with love who exist with an inner peace that can transform the world.
I hope that the first female President is one who encourages women to be peaceful, kind, gentle, and strong. We were made to be incredibly strong and stand up for ourselves in every situation and season of life, but we were not created to be aggressive. True womanhood and aggression cannot coexist. Aggression is contrary to femininity. Our culture is vehemently promoting the opposite - it pushes the agenda that they cannot exist apart from one another. It is essential to teach women growing up today that this is not the case.
I hope for my 3-year-old self that our first female President is a woman who truly supports women, yet helps women to understand clearly that there are consequences to our decisions and our actions.
I pray she is a woman who recognizes that a woman who becomes pregnant and unable to care for the child must be supported and loved - not encouraged to kill the child within her. I hope she is a woman who knows and is not afraid to proclaim that abortion is and always will be an act which goes against every fiber of our being…and that support, love, and encouragement toward avenues that will not leave them with lasting and excruciating regret is what mothers who find themselves terrified, lost, or alone truly need.
I hope that in her revolutionary role of leadership she sees clearly that "women’s liberation” should be about freeing us from the chains of the culture’s lie that we need Planned Parenthood, freeing us from the lies being told to us that our identity as women is almost solely entwined with the fight over “reproductive rights", and making clear the true definition of women’s empowerment - to empower women to live out their feminine genius.
I hope that she fights for equality of pay among men and women, because men and women certainly deserve equal pay for executing the same profession. But I also hope she recognizes that men and women are not one in the same. We both deserve to be treated rightly and justly, but are each individually different and contribute magnificent, yet different, offerings to the world.
I hope she is a woman who understands that every woman needs to be cheered on and supported well in this trying, taxing, beautiful life - the single woman in Mississippi who has been taking orders at the same small diner for twenty years - the married mother of 7 in Iowa who is running a messy, wonderful household - the twenty something entrepreneur in New York who spends her days climbing the corporate ladder and running business meetings - the single mom in Oregon working 3 jobs and trying to hold her family and herself together. They all need to know they are remembered - they all need to be encouraged to keep on keeping on.
She will have a massive job – politics, I know, is a very ugly world. However, there is no denying we have had some great leaders of our country in the past few hundred years – men of great integrity, men who value life, men who were not aggressive or dishonest but had a quiet strength that carried this country to good things.
There is no way to tell if it will happen in my lifetime – but I pray that if one day a female walks into the Oval Office to lead our nation, she represents the men and women of our country well – and that she embodies who we are meant to be as women by seizing her role with great power and integrity, with authenticity and compassion, and with tremendous strength and virtue.
“The truth is no one else can fill that role. It is a perfect fit, divinely designed… this, the role women are called to live for the common good.” - Mrs. Nick