This might not be the best thing I’ve ever written but it is one of the most defiant… for now

When I was much too young, I got engaged to a woman who never became my wife. At the time, I didn’t know this was how it would end, and so I walked through life blissfully unaware of the fate that awaited me. I imagined our wedding. I built our home in my mind. I would daydream about taking our child to the park where I used to play as a kid. There was a vivid image in my head of setting up a picnic in the field, twirling our baby, and it all seemed so real. When our engagement ended, so did that future I had planned. I had to mourn a home that would never be, a child I would never meet, and a world made up of my own imagination. The grief and loss of a future you had hoped for, dreamed for, and planned for is a unique type of pain. It is one based in deep solitude. Every day, you wake up with a fresh realization that all of those hopes and dreams will never actuate into reality. You watch homes that were never built burn and children you never met fade away like shadows. An entire future dismantled in your mind's eye.

Today, I imagine that many of you are waking up with a similar feeling.

The world we imagined for ourselves has fundamentally changed. It was not perfect by any means. It had flaws, failures, and faults that needed to be addressed. Yet, in its imperfection, a sliver of hope was visible through the cracks. Now, we are waking up to realize that the landlord has painted over that crack, and no more light is shining through.

I have been in this fight for a long time, and I know what is at stake here. There was a future I had hoped to see, rest I wished to take, and now, like all of those years ago, I am watching that dismantle in my mind. I am sure that many of you are feeling the same. But because this is not my first rodeo, I now see a very different future set ahead of me.

What I know now is that I met someone else. I built a different home. I love my children and my wife. You can take a box knife to that painted-over crack in the wall that your landlord painted over and live to fight another day.

Whatever your future is like after today, just know I do not judge you. Some of you will have to choose survival over anything else. I imagine there will soon begin a mass exodus of those who can. I understand; you have one life, and you must do with it whatever makes you feel the most safe and secure.

As for me, I must stay. That is a resolution I made many years ago when I saw the writing on the wall. I understand the risks. I know where my choosing to be vocal has placed me. I am also fully aware that it has been mostly people who look like me that have put us into the uncertainty that we face today and that if I were to leave, I would be leaving behind the most vulnerable, the most insecure, the easy targets, to be left to fend for themselves. I would be like those who jumped on half-empty lifeboats as the Titanic sank, leaving those in third class to scramble and scream. I can not listen to those screams from the safety of that lifeboat, somewhere deep out at sea, waiting for someone to come rescue me. I would live, but I could not live with myself.

I know where this ends for me; I am resolute in my choice.

The grief of this loss will only grow, dear ones. I am afraid that the worst of this pain is yet to come because we will watch those we loved, and heroes we once admired, begin to step in line. You will watch as people you thought would never betray their own words that will take the “if we can’t beat them, join them” approach to all of this and you will be filled with a tremendous sadness. A great instability sits before us, and I know it will become too much for so many to bear.

So, in this time of great uncertainty and almost certain calamity, I want to make you this promise:

I will not recant.

I will not remain silent.

I will not become complicit.

As long as I have a voice in me, even when it stakes, I will raise it up to fight injustice, speak truth to power, and console each of you along this journey ahead of us. As we stand here at the edge of that boat, as the musicians play “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” some of you will make it. Some of you will climb every mountain, and I bless you in your journey. May you fly with the wings of eagles and find peace. Just like Jack said, “Listen, Rose. You're gonna get out of here, you're gonna go on, and you're gonna make lots of babies, and you're gonna watch them grow. You're gonna die an old... an old lady warm in her bed, not here, not this night.” Never letting go doesn’t mean what I thought it meant when I was a kid; she never did. She held onto that promise. I hope that you do, too. But I have to ensure that there is room on the raft.

We will fight and rise together.

From today forward, I will become louder, not softer. I will write more, not less. And, whenever the day comes that my voice is finally taken from me, know that I never wavered. I do not have the anonymity of Bonhoeffer; I can not blend in. I have made my stance known, and I am known by them. There are some of you, even now, who do have that anonymity. Some will not know your courage and sacrifice until the dust of history settles, but my dear friends, I will enjoy a drink again with you someday at the table where the food never perishes, where every tear is wiped away, and justice flows like the river. I may not see the promised land with you, but my eyes have seen the coming of the Glory of the Lord.

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On a less poignant note, I don't know what social media will look like over the coming days and years. Substack will become the home where I share the most important parts of my writing. Here, at least, I own my list of subscribers and can still find ways to communicate with each of you should this space too fall. I will also need your support now more than ever. If you have yet to subscribe, I can not urge you enough to do so now, whether as a free or paid subscriber. There is much more to say in the days ahead, but for now, just know that I stand with you, I see you, and I love you.