There’s a reason I haven’t been nearly as active on Daily Kos or pretty much anywhere politically as I would normally be in a presidential election cycle. Our year has been turned upside down due to having to tend to both sets of parents at the same time. Bear with me, this is going to take awhile.
Long story short—my mother is recovering from a nasty fall, while my mother-in-law is fighting stage 4 cancer. Due to having to tend to both, I’ve pretty much stepped back from most in-person activism, including any work helping us keep the White House. It’s also derailed my efforts to turn my writing into a source of income by way of Substack. Earlier this year, we realized that my mother-in-law’s needs were such that we were going to have to move to my wife’s hometown in West Michigan to support her. Due to the time lost as well as other expenses, I’m seeking help by way of a GoFundMe, and if you can, get a paid subscription to my Substack as well. I mentioned this last week, but recent events have underscored why we reluctantly have to ask for help from others.
My mother-in-law was treated for esophageal cancer just before COVID-19 mushroomed. Last fall, she got an unpleasant surprise—the cancer had come back as stage IV. This past winter, we realized that it was highly likely we were going to have to move to my wife’s hometown in West Michigan before this year was out. I was reluctant to accept this prospect, but realized sometime in late January that our chances of staying here in Charlotte were somewhere between slim and none—and a lot closer to none. My wife was making plans to fly up to Michigan to help her dad with knee surgery, and discovered that on the day she was originally due to come back, her mom was having a round of chemo. As anyone who has dealt with cancer knows, chemo days are not fun, and require your family to help a lot. At that point we realized that if we stayed in Charlotte, my wife would have to shuttle back and forth to Michigan several times—and in some cases, with no timetable for her return. That simply wasn’t sustainable long-term, so we realized that barring a miracle, we were going to have to move.
But right as we were gearing up to make the necessary plans, my mother took a nasty fall that resulted in a broken hip and deep tissue wounds on her heels. The latter has made her recovery go a lot slower than expected. We’ve spent the last seven-plus months in limbo. We knew we were likely going to have to move since my mother-in-law requires a LOT of hands-on care and support. However, we also knew we couldn’t in good conscience do so until my mother’s recovery was progressing enough that we could do so. Things finally smoothed out earlier this month, and I was able to tell my mother just before Labor Day that we were moving.
All of this has kept me from most in-person activism. I haven’t been able to do much of anything to help Kamala Harris, and before her Joe Biden, win this year. Closer to home, I haven’t been able to turn the hot lights on one of the more notorious pastors in my neck of the woods, Rick Joyner of MorningStar Ministries in Fort Mill, South Carolina—based at what was once Jim Bakker’s Heritage USA, a mere 10 minutes from my current abode. You may recall that he publicly called for disgraced International House of Prayer founder Mike Bickle to be “restored” (diaried here) even after Bickle was exposed as a serial sexual predator and pedophile. I had planned to go all in to drive him out of existence, especially since there’s a Christian school under Joyner’s umbrella. But that took a back seat to tending to my mother.
Recently, the president and CEO of MorningStar, Chris Reed, resigned in the wake of a lawsuit alleging MorningStar mishandled child sex abuse by a former volunteer. While he claimed to be doing so in support of the victims, he later admitted that he himself had engaged in sexual misconduct in 2021. Joyner subsequently admitted at a MorningStar service—with the cameras on, mind you— that he had known about Reed’s past and still saw fit to promote him as operating head of the ministry. That’s more evidence that this church is not safe. It makes me sick that I can’t do more to blow the lid on this guy, but I’ve had more pressing matters to deal with.
I’d hoped to be able to move in time to help my soon-to-be new congresswoman, Hillary Scholten in MI-03, get a second term. My lady’s hometown was drawn into this district, which was once represented by Gerald Ford, in the last round of redistricting. Scholten is a Christian Dem like me, and is only the second Democrat to represent this district since 1913. She’s well on her way to becoming the first Democrat to win two full terms in this district and its predecessors since before the Civil War—and is doing it by winning over people who have voted Republican for almost all of their lives. As it stands, however, my last official act as a North Carolinian will be to help stick it to the Trump clone running for governor, Mark Robinson. I’ve lost a lot this year, but at the very least I haven’t lost my vote.
It says a lot that this election could potentially take a back seat to anything else, but the need to support both my families certainly qualifies. To put it mildly, this has been a trying time for us. We were both doing DoorDash and Instacart to help with expenses, but haven’t been able to do it nearly as much as we hoped. In addition to the expenses of making trips to Michigan, we had to take over day-to-day responsibility for my mother’s care for a time after her previous arrangement fell apart. More recently, my wife had to extend her planned stay in Michigan to help her father due to delays in her mother getting into a clinical chemo trial intended to target her cancer. I’m not one to rely on handouts, but this has us more pinched than we anticipated.
So I’m here asking for two things. I reluctantly set up a GoFundMe campaign to help with the move and other expenses; if you can, donate here. Additionally, if you prefer to donate via cash apps, let me know via Kosmail and I’ll forward that information. I’d also appreciate it if you got a paid subscription to Loud, Liberal, Christian, my Substack. I’m really hoping to ramp things up once things are more settled.