Individually, people make mistakes. Collectively, they make even bigger mistakes. No one's perfect. This form of government that we call democracy protects the rights of the minority, and it gives privileges to the majority. Sometimes the minority is wrong. Sometimes the majority is wrong.

Since I converted to a Republican in October 1996 (wow - ten years ago) I have never heard the Republican party referred to as the minority. We were the party in control back when I still believed my dad and grandpa when they said Bill Clinton walked on water. We had control of Congress for twelve years. Half of that time, we had control of Congress AND the White House. A lot has happened in those years.

Tuesday night, I watched helplessly as the majority became the minority - as we lost races all across the country to give up control of the House. I awoke in the middle of the night to find out that we even lost our own Senate seat to the other party. And then I finally realized yesterday that we had lost control of the Senate, too. It's just been a week of loss!

But no matter how horrible we feel about what happened this week, or how much we think life as we know it is about to end, we have to remember that it's not as bad as it seems. God didn't wake up in the middle of the night on Tuesday to realize that Claire McCaskill won, or that the cloning amendment passed. He wasn't surprised by that. He knew it was going to happen long before Claire was talked into running, or Michael J. Fox sat in front of that camera. He's in control. He knows what's going on.

Neil Cavuto had an interesting take on the whole ordeal. It seems like the media just added to the despair that I was feeling and the depression that many Republicans were sinking into as headlines and bright-colored graphics announced to the world that the Democrats ruled. Headlines don't last. Heroes are mortal. Life really is, as Neil described it, "a series of snapshots." It changes all the time. They won this time, but we'll have our chance again.

"Don't Know What You've Got Until it's Gone"
by Neil Cavuto

"Good headlines. Enjoy 'em while you got 'em. Because unfortunately they do not last.

Just ask Donald Rumsfeld. There was a time he was a media rock star. His press conferences were legendary. His reputation even more so. That was when the Iraq war was going well. Then it wasn't. Then he wasn't. Then he resigned. Happens all the time.

Two years ago Republicans were feeling pretty cocky, a president re-elected, a House and Senate secure. They got arrogant. Then, they got walloped.

Just like Democrats got arrogant in 1974, when they rode an anti-Republican Watergate-dominated mid-term election wave that two years later produced a Democratic president... Only to lose it all in 1980 to something called a Reagan revolution.

Twenty years later Republicans were feeling pretty cocky, convinced that their takeover of the House had all but madeBill Clinton a one-termer. It hadn't.

I guess nothing shocking or profound here, save this:

Take life as a series of snapshots. A flash in time. That changes...all the time. In the moment, at the moment, we in the media record them as great seismic events. Until they're not. And the only debate is who's the greater fool...the folks who thought the good headlines would last forever...or the folks who wrote 'em?"

Politics aren't eternal. Relationships are - relationships with God and with others. Make the most of both.