The Fishing Cooler I Packed the Night Before My Son Canceled
The Fishing Cooler I Packed the Night Before My Son Canceled
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, November 4, 2026
I had the cooler packed by nine the night before, sandwiches already made and wrapped in the fridge, two new lures still in their plastic because I wanted my son to be the one to cut them free. We had talked about this trip for three weeks, a Saturday on the lake just the two of us, no wives, no phones, nothing but the boat and whatever we pulled up out of the water. At six the next morning my phone buzzed on the nightstand. His sitter had called out sick, his wife had an early shift, and there was no version of the day that still had room for me in it. I told him it was fine. I meant it, mostly. Then I stood in the kitchen looking at a cooler full of sandwiches nobody was going to eat on a lake nobody was going to see, and felt something sag in my chest that surprised me with how heavy it was for something so small.
I am sixteen years sober, and I used to believe disappointment only had teeth when it was large, a lost job, a lost marriage, a diagnosis. What that cooler taught me again is that disappointment does not wait for a crisis to show up. It will use a canceled Saturday just as easily, because the ache was never really about the size of what got taken. It is about the gap between the morning I had already built in my mind and the one I actually woke up to. I spent years drowning gaps exactly that size, convinced a small letdown deserved a large response. Sober, I still feel the sag. I have just stopped reaching for a bottle to argue with it.
Scripture does not pretend a canceled morning or a bigger loss should simply roll off a believer without leaving a mark. David wrote from somewhere far heavier than a missed fishing trip and still let the disappointment speak plainly before he turned anywhere else with it. He did not rush past the ache to get to the resolution. The resolution came after he had told God exactly how worn down he felt, and only then did he land on something steadier than the feeling itself. "But I have trusted in Your mercy; my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me" (Psalm 13:5-6, NKJV). Trusted, not denied. Rejoiced, not pretended the morning had gone the way he wanted. The mercy came first, and the song followed it, not the other way around.
Jeremiah wrote to a people who had lost far more than a Saturday, a whole city, a whole way of life, exiled somewhere they never chose to be. God did not tell them the loss was small or that their grief was overblown. He told them where their future actually lived. "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11, NKJV). That future was never contingent on the exile ending on their preferred schedule, and mine was never contingent on that lake trip happening the Saturday I had planned it.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten that sag out of my chest any faster. I can tell myself accurately that my son is a good father choosing his family over a hobby, that there will be other Saturdays, that a cooler of sandwiches is not a tragedy by any fair measure. Every sentence is true, and none of it has ever once talked the letdown all the way down by itself, because disappointment was never actually a facts problem waiting on a calmer argument. It is a grief, small but real, and grief does not get reasoned away. It has to be carried by Someone bigger than the reasoning itself.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that sixteen years of knowing better could never finish producing on its own. Paul does not tell a disappointed man to skip past the hard part to get to the hope. He walks straight through the middle of it. "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5, NKJV). The Spirit poured out is not a reward waiting at the far end of a disappointment finally resolved. He is poured out into the middle of it, which is exactly where I was standing in my kitchen with that cooler.
Paul names the scale that actually steadies a man in a moment that small ache wants to make enormous. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:17-18, NKJV). A canceled Saturday is seen and temporary. Whatever is actually being worked in me while I carry it is not.
I believe we are living in days the world is going to keep calling unsteady, and I no longer think the small disappointments and the large ones are unrelated to each other. Jesus told His disciples plainly, the night before the cross, that tribulation was not a sign something had gone wrong with their faith. It was simply the world doing what the world does, right up until He returns to make all things new. "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NKJV). He has already overcome whatever this Saturday, and whatever the next headline, is going to do to my peace.
I called my son back that afternoon. We rescheduled for two weeks out, and I put the sandwiches in the freezer instead of the trash, which felt like a small act of hope in itself. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly what got canceled on you today, how small it may look from the outside and how heavy it actually sat on your chest. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on that Saturday going the way you pictured it, and a peace that goes beyond anything your own reasoning could manufacture on its own. He will never leave you alone with that cooler, not tonight, and not the next time something small gets taken from you without warning.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 13:5-6; Jeremiah 29:11; Romans 5:3-5; 2 Corinthians 4:17-18; John 16:33.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, November 4, 2026
I had the cooler packed by nine the night before, sandwiches already made and wrapped in the fridge, two new lures still in their plastic because I wanted my son to be the one to cut them free. We had talked about this trip for three weeks, a Saturday on the lake just the two of us, no wives, no phones, nothing but the boat and whatever we pulled up out of the water. At six the next morning my phone buzzed on the nightstand. His sitter had called out sick, his wife had an early shift, and there was no version of the day that still had room for me in it. I told him it was fine. I meant it, mostly. Then I stood in the kitchen looking at a cooler full of sandwiches nobody was going to eat on a lake nobody was going to see, and felt something sag in my chest that surprised me with how heavy it was for something so small.
I am sixteen years sober, and I used to believe disappointment only had teeth when it was large, a lost job, a lost marriage, a diagnosis. What that cooler taught me again is that disappointment does not wait for a crisis to show up. It will use a canceled Saturday just as easily, because the ache was never really about the size of what got taken. It is about the gap between the morning I had already built in my mind and the one I actually woke up to. I spent years drowning gaps exactly that size, convinced a small letdown deserved a large response. Sober, I still feel the sag. I have just stopped reaching for a bottle to argue with it.
Scripture does not pretend a canceled morning or a bigger loss should simply roll off a believer without leaving a mark. David wrote from somewhere far heavier than a missed fishing trip and still let the disappointment speak plainly before he turned anywhere else with it. He did not rush past the ache to get to the resolution. The resolution came after he had told God exactly how worn down he felt, and only then did he land on something steadier than the feeling itself. "But I have trusted in Your mercy; my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me" (Psalm 13:5-6, NKJV). Trusted, not denied. Rejoiced, not pretended the morning had gone the way he wanted. The mercy came first, and the song followed it, not the other way around.
Jeremiah wrote to a people who had lost far more than a Saturday, a whole city, a whole way of life, exiled somewhere they never chose to be. God did not tell them the loss was small or that their grief was overblown. He told them where their future actually lived. "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11, NKJV). That future was never contingent on the exile ending on their preferred schedule, and mine was never contingent on that lake trip happening the Saturday I had planned it.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten that sag out of my chest any faster. I can tell myself accurately that my son is a good father choosing his family over a hobby, that there will be other Saturdays, that a cooler of sandwiches is not a tragedy by any fair measure. Every sentence is true, and none of it has ever once talked the letdown all the way down by itself, because disappointment was never actually a facts problem waiting on a calmer argument. It is a grief, small but real, and grief does not get reasoned away. It has to be carried by Someone bigger than the reasoning itself.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that sixteen years of knowing better could never finish producing on its own. Paul does not tell a disappointed man to skip past the hard part to get to the hope. He walks straight through the middle of it. "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5, NKJV). The Spirit poured out is not a reward waiting at the far end of a disappointment finally resolved. He is poured out into the middle of it, which is exactly where I was standing in my kitchen with that cooler.
Paul names the scale that actually steadies a man in a moment that small ache wants to make enormous. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:17-18, NKJV). A canceled Saturday is seen and temporary. Whatever is actually being worked in me while I carry it is not.
I believe we are living in days the world is going to keep calling unsteady, and I no longer think the small disappointments and the large ones are unrelated to each other. Jesus told His disciples plainly, the night before the cross, that tribulation was not a sign something had gone wrong with their faith. It was simply the world doing what the world does, right up until He returns to make all things new. "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NKJV). He has already overcome whatever this Saturday, and whatever the next headline, is going to do to my peace.
I called my son back that afternoon. We rescheduled for two weeks out, and I put the sandwiches in the freezer instead of the trash, which felt like a small act of hope in itself. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly what got canceled on you today, how small it may look from the outside and how heavy it actually sat on your chest. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on that Saturday going the way you pictured it, and a peace that goes beyond anything your own reasoning could manufacture on its own. He will never leave you alone with that cooler, not tonight, and not the next time something small gets taken from you without warning.
---
Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 13:5-6; Jeremiah 29:11; Romans 5:3-5; 2 Corinthians 4:17-18; John 16:33.
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