I remember voting for the first and only time as a New Yorker, walking over before work to the retirement center on the next block and waiting in line. I pulled the curtain closed behind me nervously–it was also the first time I wasn’t a part of the majority. In a sea of liberals, I unenthusiastically picked McCain, shrugging at my lack of trendiness and my inability to renounce my red-state roots.

I grew up in a home where Crossfire aired on the weeknights and football on the weekends; there were always the “us” and “them” teams. Good and evil were like black and white: clear-cut and omnipresent. The bookshelves were adorned with the writings of Bill Bennett and Rush Limbaugh and Dinesh D’Souza. I loved the intellectual side of it–the study of issues, the understanding of words like budgetary and gravitas–even as I grew into a mentality that limited its own breadth of knowledge by only reading the stuff written by “us.” I kept my political friends close and my enemies? Screw ’em.

Then I moved to New York and was met by liberals dressed as friends. And I went to a church that didn’t try to influence my vote. There were even Christians (real ones, not just the Southern kind) who were Democrats! And I wondered if it was possible that the other side wasn’t evil or misguided but just…different.

My transformation at the hands of grace didn’t send me to the other side of the political spectrum, but it did leave me tempered. I changed my mind about the death penalty. My Facebook posts, especially around election time, weren’t quite so vitriolic. And I didn’t see hatred as a necessary component in discussing whether some of my more fabulous, well-dressed and witty friends should marry whom they wanted. I even dated one Democrat just to piss The Dad off (his response: “Don’t ever bring that son of a bitch around here”). But I ended up on the same side of the fence as always, just at a better vantage point.

One of the keys to not hating the other side was realizing that government, just like anything else I had put my hope in before, would not solve all my problems; nor was it the only problem in a world full of them. The stakes for each election consequently dropped; the hope put in each candidate was regulated by their tendency to be human and, therefore, fallible. It turned out there was only one Savior and, to my shock and surprise, he had never claimed to be a registered Republican. (Or Democrat.)

There’s a nice moment when you realize that all the stuff the world gets up in arms about is exactly what faith allows you to rise above and see as ultimately ephemeral and, often, childish. When your “I voted” sticker or party affiliation doesn’t have to be your source of identity. When you can wake up the day after the election and know that the whole world is still in his hands–and they’re not the hands of the guy who got the most votes.

Sure, I still have my opinion, often vehemently. Ask Salt-n-Pepa–everybody does. And to that end, I’ll be standing up for all the other squares when my venerable Soul Sister and I begin our series on political discussions over at The Wheelhouse Review soon. But at the end of it, expect more of a James Carville/Mary Matalin relationship than a Rachel Maddow/Ann Coulter one (I love these comparisons because she has to be James and Rachel for them to work). Because there’s something–and someone–who matters more to both of us than all this political nonsense. And that allows us to watch all the panicky, angry people who have way too much riding on this (I’m looking at you, Chris Matthews and Hank Williams Jr.)  and say, “Screw ’em.”