It was Election Day and I was crying.

There was a box full of ballots, and I took the one with my name on it.  I sat down at a round table with my friends, and we all physically wrote the name of our candidate on the piece of paper.  In this dream, oddly enough, the name I wrote is not the one I plan on voting for.  But as I looked at the faces around the table, I began to cry.

Half of my friends are going to be disappointed with whoever I choose.

I woke up, my eyes damp and a heavy sadness weighing on me in the dark.  The essence of the dream was true.  Half the country is going to be disappointed.  And shouldn’t that be the awareness we take with us to the voting booth?

Shouldn’t voting, in some way, inspire a heavy sense of responsibility and concern for our neighbor?  Not a victorious, tribal happiness that our vote is going to make us win.  Inside that curtained booth, we need to remember that half this country disagrees with us in legitimate ways.

Not all those who vote for Romney think rape is redeemable.  Not all those who vote for Obama agree with abortion.  Some people who vote for Romney think his economic policies are a better way to help people.  Some people who vote for Obama think government programs are not ‘welfare’ but a means of provision for the least of these.  Some in our country feel that strengthening the middle class really can help lift everyone out of poverty.  And some really would sacrifice their own comfort for the sake of the poor.

As someone who only agrees with the candidates on 45% and 55% of the issues, I find myself firmly in the middle of this one.  As such, it’s been fascinating and disheartening to watch comments and articles bandied about by people on both sides of the aisle.

I used to think that only Republicans mixed faith and politics, but that is definitely not true.

Can we just all stop with the histrionics?  Obama is not going to make America collapse.  Romney is not going to make women feel like it’s 1912.

You know why?  The president is only one person.  Important, yes, but also why we have Congress and the courts.  Remember that whole checks and balances thing?

And also because yes, although their policies affect our lives, they aren’t in our lives.  We are in our lives.  We are the ones who have neighbors to love, friends to support, family to get along with.  We are the ones, day in and day out, can show love and compassion, acceptance and grace.

I don’t need a presidential stance on women to inform how I think about rape or how I treat a single mom, or teenage pregnancy.  I don’t need a governmental program to enable me to support my local food pantry or bring meals to someone who needs it.

Remember when you were a kid and your parents told you not to be a poor winner or a sore loser?  We could all stand to remember that.  The presidential election is not a sports game.  The results don’t mean that one side won, and they get the trophy while everyone else goes home empty-handed.

At the end of the World Series, when the Tigers come back to Michigan victorious, they won’t have to mingle with the Giants or White Sox on a daily basis.

But we do.  We have to mingle every day with our neighbors, our friends, the people we sit next to at church, all those people who have voted differently than us.  All of those people who may be legitimately hurt or offended every time we brush our opponents with broad strokes and unfeeling judgments.

It’s easy to get passionate about one day, one decision we get to make.  It’s easy to inflate the importance of inserting that paper into the machine.  The media thrives on that inflation.  We convince ourselves that our one vote matters, and if we win, then by God, we are right and superior and know better than all of you losers, who are so obviously out of God’s will in how you voted.

It is so easy to be passionate about one choice.  It is much harder to be passionate and enthusiastic about all the littler choices we need to make every day.  It is hard to be passionate about loving the unlovable, forgiving the unforgivable, and validating opposing opinions.  It’s easy to think that one choice defines us.  That a label like liberal or conservative defines the quality of our character, the depth of our spirituality.  But our lives are made up of all the little choices, small decisions that few people see and the media doesn’t cover.

Being politically engaged is not a sporting event.  So whatever happens, on November 6th, let’s not respond with victorious chants, but instead remember our friends who are sadly disappointed.  With a country this divided, it could easily have been the other way around.

I dreamed I went to the voting booth and cried.

May it be so.