Something shifted five years ago. Did you feel it too?
Shifting that began quietly in the spring of 2020 has swelled into a multi-dimensional firestorm. Institutions are shaking, relationships are dividing, and beneath all the noise, there’s this sense that we’ve stepped into a time of deep transition.
Change, by nature, is the process of becoming—of growing and maturing, of moving forward in life. None of us, when we really think about it, wants to be called stagnant. Yet as humans, we often cling to the familiar. We curl up in our little boxes and tell ourselves that staying put is safer than stepping into the unknown.
But change comes anyway. And lately, it’s been knocking down doors.
The Wound
Real change usually begins with a problem we can no longer ignore—like an open wound. When that wound is deep or systemic, a doctor can’t just slap a Band-Aid on it. They have to get in there and dig.
They probe into tenderness so the trapped, festering air pockets can be released. Sometimes they deliberately make it bleed to bring oxygen to the tissue. Then they flood it with water, rinsing out the debris and infection. It’s messy, disgusting, and painful—but absolutely necessary.
Only after that can the wound be packed, usually with something healing. Then it must be protected with gauze, carefully watched, and cleansed again and again before it’s healed enough to be left alone.
That’s how I see these last five years: a gaping wound in our nation, exposed and cleansing so we can soon begin to heal.
Maybe it started as a small ache or a scratch—a court case, a whistleblower, a “conspiracy theory,” early warnings that something wasn’t right. Those in positions to act either would not or could not address it. So, the infection spread. Now it looks like full-blown gangrene in some places.
And yet even gangrene, with all its horror, doesn’t have to be the end. It often signals the point at which we must decide: Will we continue to keep the blinders on and let the corruption spread, or will we endure the painful cutting away- the change that leads to healing?
A Nation With a Constitution, But Not Under It
Politically, I feel like our nation has been living in a strange split reality of sorts.
Do we still have a Constitution? We reference it, we swear oaths to uphold it…but we don’t really live under it, do we? We’ve kept the document itself—a convenient political brick to throw—while drifting from the moral framework and personal responsibility it presupposed.
When the players change but the policies do not, when legislators shout “transparency” yet use vague language in the laws they craft, the system starts to feel rigged. And when hundreds-page bills are rushed through before anyone can read them—packed with phrases that hand power to agencies instead of the people—that deepens the feeling of hollowness. Disengagement takes root. And yet, we also see where our lack of knowledge and involvement has brought us. That concern—that yearning for truth—keeps growing: larger than our fear, larger than our frustration.
The Foundation We Forgot
Our Founding Fathers carried a fragile but fierce hope for a new life, a new nation, and a liberty-minded legal process. At its core, the Constitution is a set of laws—protections—designed for a people of faith who believed in a Divine standard of truth and justice. John Adams famously said that the Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people.” That wasn’t a call to hard legalism or one particular denomination; it was a recognition that freedom only works when it’s tethered to virtue—when people share a sense of right and wrong anchored in something greater than themselves.
Yet, our government’s day-to-day processes are increasingly divorced from that foundation.
A perfect example is the famous “separation of church and state.” It is widely argued with context forgotten. Not written in the Constitution, this was actually part of a letter written in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Church (a state-established church in Connecticut) to quell their concerns that the First Amendment didn’t go far enough and the state potentially could impose religious restrictions (like rule-making authority). Jefferson did not believe in separating religion from public life—only from government control. It was a one-directional barrier.
Truth or Consequences
As our nation has grown more politically charged, the division has crept right into our living rooms. We’ve watched households split down the middle, families drawing hard lines around—sometimes through—the dinner table. Do we really have to live like this? Do we always have to learn the hard way? If history is any indication, the uncomfortable answer is often yes. Think of Moses leading God’s people out of Egypt: hope and a new life were just over the horizon, yet the people turned their backs—back to the traditions of man, back to what was familiar, even if it was bondage. Forty years in the wilderness. That pattern has repeated itself across history, across nations—and now, again, we are walking it out.
Part of our modern wilderness is the way we handle truth. We live in a time where truth is treated as subjective, yet truth itself is unmoving; it’s our individual experience around it that differs. If truth is dictated not by law but by the latest offense, how can justice stand? We toss around phrases like “agree to disagree,” but sometimes that becomes a blanket excuse to avoid self-reflection and deeper questions: If I quietly “agree to disagree” with something genuinely destructive or unjust, am I actually agreeing by my silence? Is this phrase always meant in a peacekeeping way, or does it also imply a kind of submission to authority? Where are the lines between unity and compromise—between peace and capitulation? And when division finally comes, does it have to be a bad thing—or can it sometimes be a painful but necessary sorting of hearts?
The Drama We See… and the Reality We Don’t
As we stumble out of yet another round of Congressional drama over shutting down the government, I’m reminded how little we truly see. It is never just about one bill or one party; it’s a layered series of choices and chess moves, each side angling for its own version of victory. What pieces and promises are negotiated in the halls and over drinks? What undercurrents shape decisions we never hear about? What is the heart ruling our nation?
It’s so easy to pick a person or a party and cast them as the villain. Yet when I take a step back and look at the broader picture, I find very few leaders on any side who seem to understand truth, value and justice—the very things we desperately need if we’re going to move forward in any meaningful way.
The last five years, to me, have been a constant exposure of crimes and hearts—on the national stage, yes, but also in our local communities. Masks are slipping. Motives are being revealed.
The political debris is being dragged out into the light. And exposure, as ugly and uncomfortable as it is, remains a necessary part of the road to healing.
The Path to Healing: Light Your Lamp
At the same time, I feel the stiff winds of change picking up, growing stronger by the day. The house of cards is wobbling; some parts are already collapsing. To many, it looks like pure chaos. To me, it looks like the necessary tearing down before an honest foundation can be built.
We’ve been in the painful phase—the probing, flushing, exposing. But soon there will come a moment when we begin packing the wound, pouring in the soothing honey as healing balm. There will come a season of stitches and scars instead of raw, open flesh.
It may seem dark to the naked eye right now. But this is when we light our lamps.
This is when we choose the road less traveled: the path of engagement instead of apathy, conviction instead of cowardice, truth instead of convenient lies, love instead of blind tribalism.
We lead on, even when our knees shake.
We speak, even when our voices tremble.
We refuse to define our character with bitterness and offense.
The wound is real.
The infection is real.
But so is the promise of healing.
And I believe—we will heal.
One Response
Well said.