Farewell, Mr. President.

Dear Mr. President,

In the past five days there have been hundreds of articles written about you by people of great import and experience. There are those with degrees and resumes that boast some of the most powerful positions in the world who are uniquely qualified to speak of you. Political commentators, presidential biographers, former cabinet members, world leaders, and personal friends are remembering and reminding the world of your kindness, your character, your wisdom, your strength, and of course, of the far reaching impact your leadership had on our people, our country, and our world.

And I'm just a girl who lives in the suburbs of Washington DC, attends a few basketball or baseball games a week, and raises and loves three boys and one husband. I go to church and volunteer. I vote and I drive an SUV. I love Jesus, my country, my family, and my friends. And, as I know you did, I have a tendency to write all my feelings down. It seems I've got a lot of them this week, as I always anticipated I would at the time of your passing.

No one will ask me to speak on a panel about you. And yet, so many times over the years I have spoken about you as if you were a member of my family. I have effectively given you the credit for this beautifully basic life that I have built away from our beloved Texas . . . a life, which I remind myself often, is in the very fact of its ordinary-ness, quite extraordinary.

Now, I imagine you would correct me on this point, reminding me that it wasn't really you. It was really the God we both worship - the One with whom you sit in glory today, the One who directs all our paths, and the One who holds our future - who brought me to Washington, DC. He, of course, gave me this life. But as we have heard over and over this week, our God used you in many ways to change the course of the world and as He can handle both big and small things, He used you to help change the course of my little life, too.

I moved from Austin, Texas to Washington DC in 1992 with a degree in Political Science under my belt. It was you who inspired that degree. It was the prospect of your re-election that brought me here. As a certified homebody, I was terrified to be away from my family, but I knew I needed to leave, if just for a bit to prove to myself that I could. I believed so completely and devotedly in who you were and that you should continue to be our president that I drove my Volkswagen across the country, hopped on the Metro, and found myself downtown outside of your campaign headquarters. I volunteered for a couple of weeks there, sitting in a small room to man a phone with a number that was very clearly saved for the VIPs in the party.

(That's actually sarcasm, Sir. You know it well. I think that phone might have rung twice in those weeks.)

Eventually I found myself a position - if it could even be called a position - in the lowest depths of the Republican National Committee's office. I was so far down the food chain that I had to push the button on the elevator, not for B1, but for B2. I was literally in the basement of the basement.

In the desk next to me was a boy who made me laugh as I opened mail and calculated small donor checks. Just about every day he offered to ride the elevator up to B1 to get me a diet Coke and never took my money. He recognized when I had gotten my hair cut (for the first and last time ever, I might point out) and invited me to eat lunch in the park around the corner from our building. He drove a jeep which I thought was the coolest thing ever. We ate Mexican food at a very fancy restaurant where you had to walk through the kitchen to get to the bathroom and watched Fletch on our first date. Along with other recent college graduates working on the Hill, we met at the bar down the street after work, shot pool, fed quarters into a jukebox, and believed with our entire hearts that you would lead us for the next four years.

The loss of the election hit me really hard. It wasn't that I felt I had personally failed at some political strategy to help you get re-elected. (Did I mention B2?). It was because of a host of other reasons that it took me awhile to understand.

I vividly remember that the morning after Election Day was grey and dismal in Washington DC. It was a true reflection of how I felt. I remember walking around the city with a friend completely stunned and very, very sad. I remember how we stopped to see the headline of The Washington Times in one of those coin operated machines on the street that you don't see anymore. The headline, "President Clinton: Bush ousted in Electoral College Landslide" made my stomach drop and tears well up in my eyes. I was so young and so confused.

I look back now and realize that the devastation I felt had as much to do with how much I thought you should be President as with the crushing realization that there were people out there who did not agree with me. I mean, what??!! I simply couldn't understand it and it was a lesson that I needed desperately to learn. I was so sure, so idealistic, so dismissive of polls that said that you could very likely lose. And yet, this reality was something I needed to know. There are people who don't view the world as I do. There are people who don't believe that my way is the best way. And in this case, it was the majority of the people. I was flabbergasted. It's almost funny now to look back and see how shocking this realization was to my naive 23 year old self.

In the end, I watched how you handled disagreements and defeat graciously and humbly. I watched how our country was resilient and strong enough to peacefully handle change. I found that I, too, could be on the losing side and come out okay. Essentially, I learned that I could disagree with folks - even those who live in my own house - and still find that they were good, decent, loving people, too. I found that relationships were more important than always being right.

I had intended to go back to Texas after the election, but there was the problem of that boy. I decided to stay an extra six months because I wasn't sure I wanted him to live a life without me in it. Turns out I didn't let him. I've been here twenty-six years now. After we got married, we walked into our reception and there you stood.

Kinda.

My parents had set up a life size cutout of you on the dance floor at our wedding reception. We laughed and thanked "you" for being our matchmaker.

We couldn't swing watching your service today live, so we promised each other we would wait to watch until later so that we could be together. We will watch it in its entirety. We won't miss a minute. Historians and world leaders will stand and thank you today. They will remind us that our country is better because of you.

But I don't need them to tell me because I have always known.

So when we watch the nation bid farewell to you, I will whisper the same to the heavens as I have many times before.

Thank you, George Herbert Walker Bush. I came to this place because of you. I met this man because of you. I have this family because of you. My story is what it is because of you. I am forever grateful. Rest well, sir.