my laptop exploded.

My laptop exploded. Kind of. One day, it was fine, and the next, it began shooting flames from somewhere near the CDROM drive. In a slight panic, I tossed it into my kitchen, where it extinguished itself; it sat there for about two weeks, and i was afraid to touch it. While it sat on white tile, blowing sparks and smoke, I rolled my eyes heavenward and deadpanned at God a little; I imagine he may have grinned back.

It's not that I haven't had time to get a new computer; I have. The problem is that I can't write. I don't know why I'm bothering to write and share this, using a rinky-dink keyboard and my iPad, writing to you about how I can't write, as though that's something you need to know or care about, as though it were essential information. Writing about how I am like a sieve under water, and when I lift myself out of the water and place myself in front of a keyboard, every word or sense of direction inside me rushes out, fizzles away. 

abortion is murder. 

homosexuality is sin. 

mental illness is the devil. 

women should submit. 

It's valid to wonder why do you even "need" to write about these things? why not just keep them private? Why do you presume that what you have to say is worth saying? Who is going to read what you know and conider adjusting their thinking - or just their reaction - midstream? as though someone opposed might ever agree that abortion isnt always wrong, or that loving, honest responses to coming out can still be demeaning, or maybe you can't write anymore because you were a little crazy before, and now, you're "Stable," and doesn't that feel so much better? Find you a man; you done been to cookin' school, so it should be easy to land one. 

I've always valued nuance; I've valued staking a claim without degrading opposing claims. That's gone. Dead. I don't know what to do with the fact that conclusions to which I've come have required driving a stake directly through the heart of anything I used to believe. I've never been out for blood before; I am now. I am not up for discussion. It is shocking and scary and fiercely real; I am out for the blood of anything which degrades or devalues what I know to be sacred. I dare you. And I don't know what to do with that - I don't know how to be a confessional writer who grows in my faith by sharing it with others when I know the rote party line better than I know living its inverse. I feel, frankly, like an asshole, assuming that my words might matter when, clearly, they do not. From no to help to talk to me to right now. They fall to the ground. 

I "need" to write about these things because of how God lives through them in spite of me; I just can't imagine a time or place when I'll trust that peoples' first instincts won't be to respond. I can't imagine being able to give people more credit than to steel myself for their inevitable rebuttal. As though I need to hear it again. As though I didn't grow up hearing it. As though you saying it one more time might change my mind this time; as though my sharing might change yours. 

If this struggle has taught me anything, it's the living truth that shutting up is, most of the time, much more valuable than responding. Maybe that's where my voice went. I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine.