Posts

The Rejection Email That Came In at 9:47 on a Friday Night

-
The Rejection Email That Came In at 9:47 on a Friday Night The recruiter had told me Monday that I was their top choice, that it was basically down to formalities, that I should expect to hear something by the end of the week. I believed her, the way you believe a person who has no obvious reason to lie to you. I told my wife. I told my sponsor. I let myself walk through the kitchen that whole week picturing the new schedule, the better insurance, the relief of finally not doing math on every grocery bill. By Friday afternoon I had checked my email so many times my thumb had worn a little groove into the habit. At 9:47 that night, long after any normal business would send anything, three sentences arrived telling me they had decided to move forward with another candidate, and wishing me well in my future endeavors. I read it twice standing in my driveway, car still running, and then I just sat there in the dark for a long time before I went inside. I am ten years sober, and I use...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Unfamiliar $212.47 Charge I Keep Refreshing My Bank App to Stare At

-
The Unfamiliar $212.47 Charge I Keep Refreshing My Bank App to Stare At It showed up on my account Tuesday morning, a charge from a vendor name I had never seen before, $212.47, no description beyond a string of letters that meant nothing to me. I have opened that banking app probably thirty times since then, not to do anything useful with it, just to look at the same line again as if staring hard enough might finally explain itself. I called the bank once and sat on hold long enough to start composing the complaint I would file if this turned into something worse. I have not called back. Instead I have spent two days quietly rehearsing every version of how bad this could get, a drained account, a stolen identity, months of phone calls to fix something I did not cause, and none of those versions has a single fact behind it yet. I am seven years sober, and for most of my drinking I assumed anxiety was just what responsible adults carried, a normal weight that came with normal bill...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Two Coffee Mugs I Fill Every Morning in Near Silence

-
The Two Coffee Mugs I Fill Every Morning in Near Silence My wife and I have sat at the same kitchen table every morning for twenty-three years, and most mornings now we barely talk. I fill her mug the same way I have for two decades, cream, no sugar, and set it down next to her phone while she scrolls through the news. I drink mine black and read something on my own screen across from her. We are not fighting. We have not fought about anything real in months. If you asked either of us, we would both say the marriage is fine, and we would mean it. But I noticed last Tuesday that twenty minutes had passed at that table and neither of us had said a single word, and something in my chest went quiet and heavy at the same time, the particular ache of being right next to someone and still feeling like I am sitting alone. I am ten years sober, and for most of that decade I measured loneliness by distance. If she was in the room, I assumed I could not possibly be lonely, because lonelines...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Clean Bloodwork Results I Still Can't Make Myself Believe

-
The Clean Bloodwork Results I Still Can't Make Myself Believe RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 27, 2026 My doctor called yesterday afternoon, which almost never happens for good news, usually only for the kind of call where they want you sitting down first. She told me the labs came back clean, every marker in range, nothing that needs a follow-up scan or a specialist or a second opinion. I said thank you and hung up and then sat at my kitchen table for a long time not feeling the relief I expected to feel. Instead I found myself rereading the portal results twice, looking for a number I might have misread, half convinced the real results were still coming and these were some kind of mistake. I have spent six months bracing for bad news. Apparently I did not know how to receive good news when it finally arrived. I am twelve years sober, and I used to think doubt was mostly a problem for people who doubted God could get them through something hard. Nobody warned m...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Adoption Agency Email I Refresh My Inbox Every Four Minutes Waiting For

-
The Adoption Agency Email I Refresh My Inbox Every Four Minutes Waiting For My wife and I submitted our home study update to the agency eleven days ago, the last document standing between us and a phone call that could change which child's face we finally get to learn. I have refreshed my email so many times this week that my thumb now does it without my mind giving the order, standing in line at the hardware store, sitting through a sermon I should have been listening to instead, lying in bed at one in the morning telling myself this refresh will be the last one tonight. Nothing ever comes. The agency told us these things take weeks, sometimes longer, and I nodded like a reasonable man who understood that completely. My thumb apparently did not get the memo. I am eleven years sober, and for most of those years I assumed impatience was a smaller sin than the ones that nearly killed me, something closer to a bad habit than a real spiritual problem worth confessing. This waitin...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Unworn Work Boots Still by My Father's Back Door

-
The Unworn Work Boots Still by My Father's Back Door My father died eight months ago, and I ended up with his house, which means I walk past his work boots every time I go in through the back. They sit exactly where he left them the last morning he was well enough to wear them, caked with dried mud from a garden he never got to plant that spring. I have painted two rooms and cleared three closets of his clothes since he passed. I cannot move those boots. I have reached for them twice, meaning to finally carry them to my truck for the donation bin, and both times my hand stopped an inch above the leather like something physical was holding it back. I am sixteen years sober, and I used to believe grief was one of the few things recovery could not touch, that I would simply have to white-knuckle my way through losing my father the way I white-knuckled everything else before I got help. Those boots have taught me instead that grief does not answer to willpower any better than add...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Garment Bag From My Daughter's Called-Off Wedding Still Hanging in the Hall Closet

-
The Garment Bag From My Daughter's Called-Off Wedding Still Hanging in the Hall Closet It has been four months since my daughter called me from her apartment, crying so hard I could barely make out the words, to tell me the wedding was off. Not postponed. Off. I had already paid the deposit on the reception hall. I had already picked up my tux from the tailor and hung it in the hall closet in its garment bag, zipped and ready, three full months before I would have needed it. I still have not taken it back to the tailor for a refund, though I know I should. Some mornings I open that closet looking for my winter coat and the garment bag is right there, white plastic, a reminder of a day that is simply not going to happen the way every one of us had already pictured it happening. I do not know why I am keeping it. I think some part of me is not ready to admit, by hanging it up for good in storage, that the hope attached to it is actually gone. I am fourteen years sober, and I us...
Post a Comment
Read more