Finding Hope

F or most of my adult life, I treated my opinions like they were emergency rescue equipment. I wasn’t sharing an opinion. I was delivering a sermon. A public service. A sacred duty. Politics? I had a full TED Talk locked and loaded. Religion? The passion of ten theologians, zero formal training. Education policy? I typed like a man possessed. Oat milk? A crime against God and cows. Honestly, I believed I was helping. Like maybe — just maybe — my opinion could dismantle corruption, bridge divides, fix polarization, AND teach people the proper way to load a washing machine. Guess what: It did not. I used to walk around with the spiritual posture of a man who believed the world was one argument away from enlightenment. I was an emotional smoke detector — always beeping. Erin could probably hear me ramping up before I opened my mouth. And then the culture started shifting… And not gently. More like a refrigerator crashing down a flight of stairs. Suddenly our opinions weren’t ideas anymore...

W e moved into our home three and a half years ago. And listen — I did not love her. At all. Of all the houses we toured, this was the one I wanted the least. She was basically a 1970s time capsule with a mortgage. Pink rugs. Pink walls. A kitchen so tiny and outdated it looked like the set of a sitcom where someone burns toast every episode. It was the kind of house realtors describe as having “great bones,” which is code for: “Every single thing here will collapse unless you devote your next decade—and several internal organs—to renovations.” But after life slowed down…. And suddenly… I was home. Not visiting. Not sprinting in and out. Not waving at my family like I lived in an airport terminal. Home. Full-time. Three hundred and sixty-five days in a row. Before this year, I existed here like a ghost with a very consistent commute. I’d leave at 6:30 a.m., come home at 7:30 p.m., and collapse long enough to reset the cycle. Weekends were just a blur of shuttling kids from activity t...

H ere’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: I talk to strangers now. Like… willingly. With intention. Without Erin bribing me. Without it being part of my job description or leadership duties. This is concerning to my family. Erin blinks at me slowly — like a cat checking if I’m okay. Abbey and Sadie whisper, “Is… Dad alright?” Because in my previous life, I talked to people mostly because I had to. Hundreds of conversations a day, none of them mine. Talking wasn’t connection. It was obligation. But now? I talk to people because I actually want to. This has startled everyone, including me. ✧ It began on a dog walk… Surprise I know. A man strolled by with a tiny white dog wearing booties that definitely cost more than my college textbooks. This dog wasn’t just dressed — she was styled. She looked like she had opinions about wine pairings. Before I knew it, I said, “That dog isn’t walking — she’s supervising.” The man laughed. The dog gave me a look like, “Correct”.  Rosie and Benj...

    I f you told me two years ago I’d own four sets of rosary beads and sneak them under my kids’ pillows like some kind of Catholic Tooth Fairy , I’d have laughed you right out of my kitchen. Rosary beads, to me, were childhood relics—like VHS tapes or the belief that I’d someday have abs. Then one day, I found my old First Communion beads in a dusty little pouch that smelled like church pews and my grandmother’s purse. I picked them up… and felt this tiny tug inside my chest. Not dramatic. Not holy lightning. More like, “Hey Mike, I’m here.” So I started praying the rosary. Just to see. Just to breathe. And surprisingly? I liked it. Not because I understand all the mysteries (I absolutely do not). Not because I suddenly became holy (also no). But because the beads slow me down . They’re like a weighted blanket for my soul. A rhythm for my runaway brain. A rope I grab when life gets loud. Now I pray every day. Not out of obligation... out of sanity. I e...

W orry is the most demanding coworker I’ve ever had. It shows up before I’m awake. It does not clock out. It does not respect boundaries. It does not care that I’m in the shower. If worry were an employee, I’d fire it. If worry were a person, I’d block it. If worry were a subscription, I’d unsubscribe so hard the app would crash. But there it is, sitting at the edge of my bed every morning like an over-caffeinated intern: “Rise and shine! Ready to obsess over that thing that might happen in six to nine business years?” Worry warms up like a Peloton instructor: “Let’s begin with a light catastrophe. Deep breath… imagine losing everything. And… hold.” Boom. Another day, ruined before breakfast. Because worry is a looker — always scanning, scanning, scanning. For danger. For rejection. For imaginary conversations where you absolutely say the wrong thing. Worry looks around. But faith? Faith looks up. I remember that C.S. Lewis said, “Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason on...

O nce the noise in my life turned down to a humane volume, the past started knocking— softly at first, then like an Amazon driver who refuses to leave. And just like that, the memories came back: crooked, sticky, wild, and absolutely real. I remember those five-week notices (mid-term report cards) from school — tiny paper bombs engineered solely to ruin your month. I used to sprint home like Jason Bourne with a Trapper Keeper, intercepting them before my parents could read the academic autopsy. I remember my childhood bedroom — roughly the size of a coffin for a medium-sized hamster. A bed. A bureau. A closet I turned into a confessional, writing dramatic notes to no one and letters to a “someday” I was sure would be cooler than “today.” I remember my beige rotary telephone with the cord so long and twisted it could’ve doubled as a municipal plumbing project. I’d pace in circles while talking to friends, dragging that cord like a medieval burden. I remember throwing Chinese stars at my...

I was out raking the yard a few weeks ago — because this is who I am now, a man who rakes recreationally — when a thought hit me so hard I had to stop and lean on the rake like a frontier widower gazing into the distance. I pretend it’s “admiring the foliage.” But really, it’s “my lower back gave out and I’m seeing stars.” Anyway — there I was, ankle-deep in leaves, raking around dog poop. And not just dog poop — chicken poop. Because I, in my infinite wisdom, said, “Let’s let them free-range! Let them live their best lives!” Well, their best lives are now splattered across my lawn like Jackson Pollock took up poultry. So while navigating the Poop Olympics with my rake, it hit me: It’s been thirty-six years since I graduated high school. Thirty-six. That’s not a time span — that’s a paleontological measurement. Back then, I had no idea who I was or where I was going. Career? No clue. Life plan? Zero. Where I’d live? Literally anywhere but my hometown. And now? I live… in my hometown. ...

T here’s a man in my neighborhood who drives a big old white pickup with a metal-mesh trailer attached — the kind of trailer that looks like it could either haul lawn equipment… or a small dragon. And because I now walk my dogs approximately 90,000 steps a week (according to my Apple Watch, which is now my spiritual director), I began noticing something on his trailer: A sticker. Not just any sticker — the  sticker. A vintage 1970s Batman logo. The EXACT one I had on my childhood bedroom door, right next to the glow-in-the-dark Star Wars poster I believed was watching over me like a Jedi angel. Suddenly I was eight again: Wearing Batman Underoos (we don’t need to linger on this), a homemade Halloween costume with a Robin’s-egg-blue mask, and a cape three sizes too big that made me look less like a superhero and more like a toddler being gently blown away by a light breeze. So now every morning, I’d spot this pickup and think: Ah yes. My people. At first, the t...

  T he re’s a house on my block that I swear no one has lived in for years — and yet… someone is upkeeping it. Not lovingly. Not creatively. Just… dutifully. Like whoever tends to it is doing the bare minimum to keep it standing, the way you water a dying plant out of respect, not hope. It sits there, this faded two-story time capsule, with one single bedroom light on upstairs on the right. Always the same light. Morning. Afternoon. Midnight. Rain. Snow. August humidity that melts your shins. No cars in the driveway. No movement behind the curtains. Just one stubborn bulb glowing like it’s guarding a secret. The house itself is this muted pink color — or maybe brown? It’s hard to tell because the paint is so faded it looks like a pair of jeans that’s been washed into moral ambiguity. The whole thing feels black-and-white, like it’s living in a flashback scene while the rest of the block is in full color. Nothing is wrong with it. The lawn is cut. The bushes are tr...

I recognize that marriage is basically two people running a very small, very chaotic nonprofit… with zero funding… and at least one person who has opinions about the thermostat. I used to think love was grand gestures and anniversaries and holding hands on beaches. Turns out love is: • finding your partner’s phone for the 11th time today, • pretending not to notice when they clean the dishes wrong, • and making coffee so repeatedly disappointing it becomes a third character in your marriage. Erin doesn’t want perfection. She wants presence. Attention. A man who hears her say “I’m fine” and knows that is a code requiring immediate snacks. Marriage isn’t glamour. It’s choosing each other on the days you don’t even like yourself. And thank God — she keeps choosing me. Every day, she teaches me how to choose back. “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”    - Colossians 3:14  

T here was a day —  a perfectly ordinary Tuesday — when I discovered something shocking about myself: If I say nothing… everything gets better. I don’t mean silent-treatment nothing. I don’t mean passive-aggressive nothing. I mean the quiet, holy, grown-up kind of nothing — the kind that takes every ounce of restraint God ever gave me. For most of my life, I’ve been a helper/fixer/clarifier/corrector/overexplainer hybrid. A Swiss Army knife of unnecessary commentary. If something seemed off, I jumped in. If something seemed wrong, I corrected it. If something could be done “better,” I graciously offered my unsolicited expertise — like a man who believes his family is constantly one helpful suggestion away from nirvana. And then one day, I didn’t. It started with Erin. We were mid-discussion — the kind couples have about, you know, everything. The dishes. Schedules. Tone. Interpretations of tone. Interpretations of interpretations of tone. Normally this is where I’d leap in with my ...