I have a soft spot for homelessness and the housing crisis in this country — something we created, or at best allowed to grow under the weight of overloaded minds and selective outrage. So when a gut-punch article crossed my feed today, I felt it.
No soapbox. That’s not what this is.
What this is, is me sitting with a question that’s been nagging at me — one I used to think was rhetorical: *Why do I always do this?*
Do what?
Take something I’m genuinely passionate about, something I wanted to share with my wife when she got home, and watch it detonate. What started as conversation turned into my stomach dropping when she responded to my proclamation — that stable housing should be as fundamental a right as free speech — with a question. Something like: *What if they don’t work?*
I exploded. First inside. Then out loud.
It started with *how can you say you care about people* and ended with me weaponizing a Bible verse — equating faith without action to dead faith — to justify my own tirade. Whoa. WTF? How did I take something I genuinely feel altruistic about and turn it into that?
Disappointed doesn’t cover it. Ashamed is closer. And instead of stopping, I doubled down — hiding behind legitimate points to cover up what was really just a selfish, dumbass minute of posturing that served nobody. Least of all the issue I claimed to care about.
My actions moved the needle exactly nowhere.
I’ll apologize. Even if I’m met with *you always just say sorry and expect me to forget* — no, but that is how forgiveness works. I’ll leave it there.
Here’s what I keep coming back to: we have to be able to have these conversations. That’s the whole thing. But your convictions on a subject cannot bleed into moments where they don’t belong. How you feel in a moment is just that — a moment. Often completely separate from the right thing to do in it.
Listen freely. Be slow to speak. Slower than you think.
And whatever we do — if we do it through love and let that guide it — maybe we move the needle. Maybe just maybe.
The Silent Underground 