Rep. Elise Stefanik, Republican candidate running to unseat New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, announced she is pulling out of the race and will not seek reelection for her congressional seat, in which she is now serving her sixth term.

It’s been a rough couple years for Stefanik.

After President Donald Trump’s reelection, she was named to be the new U.S. ambassador to the U.N. However, this never happened because she returned to the House to alleviate the thin Republican majority to get the One Big Beautiful Bill passed.

Last month she announced her bid for the governorship, thinking she would be the Republican nominee. Now a local county Republican official has entered the race, necessitating a primary.

Stefanik decided to call it quits.

She says she’s decided what is critical in her life now is to spend time with her family and raising her young son.

“I believe being a parent is life’s greatest gift and greatest responsibility,” she said.

Some jaded cynics may see this as an excuse for giving up. I don’t.

Stefanik is anything but a shrinking violet.

Winning her congressional seat at age 30 made her the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress.

She entered the national spotlight with her incisive and persistent questioning of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in House hearings on antisemitism. The ordeal they went through with Stefanik led both to step down from their positions.

Contrary to the dour view of those who live secular lives, whose struggles take place in a backdrop of meaninglessness, those of faith know each critical node to which we arrive is not random.

Even the great physicist Albert Einstein noted, “God does not play dice with the universe.”

The challenges we face, those critical forks in the road to which we arrive, cause us to take stock and get our priorities clear.

The model that Stefanik now sets could influence our country far more than she ever might as a congressional leader or U.N. ambassador.

Erika Kirk, taking over as CEO of Turning Point USA, assuming the leadership of her late husband Charlie, has noted her interest in bringing the Christian values of marriage and family to young women as her husband did with young men.

Our country is experiencing both a marriage crisis and a children crisis.

At a recent press briefing at the White House, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called our declining fertility rate a “national security threat.” The fertility rate — the number of births per woman — is now 1.6. To maintain the population at its existing level requires a rate of 2.1. Kennedy noted that when his uncle John F. Kennedy was president, the rate was 3.5.

The Washington Post reports that the number of women between 25 and 44 that have never given birth has risen from 18.2% in 1976 to 34.6% in 2022.

And, per Pew Research, the percent of 40-year-old Americans who have never married his risen from 6% in 1980 to 25% in 2021.

It’s worse with women than men. Per Pew Research, in 1993, 83% of 12th grade girls said they were likely to get married. By 2023, this was down to 61%. Among 12th grade boys, 76% in 1993 and 74% in 2023 said they were likely to get married.

Why materialism and secularism have taken a greater toll among young women is open to speculation.

But RFK Jr. is right. This is a national security threat.

So now let’s use the awe of Christmas to recall and celebrate that our scripture tells us to “choose life.”

And let’s pray that our examples of transforming the isolation of pain into the joy of meaning and giving and creating will touch our troubled nation.

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