The Family Group Text I Muted Two Years Ago and Never Turned Back On RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 4, 2026 I was sitting at my own kitchen table Tuesday night, my wife across from me, my youngest doing homework at my elbow, and my phone lit up on the counter with a notification I couldn't hear because I muted that thread two years ago and never once thought to turn the sound back on. It is the group text with my brothers and my mother, the one where birthdays get wished and dumb memes get forwarded and somebody always asks if anyone's free for Sunday dinner. I am in it. I read every message eventually. I almost never answer. I sat there in a room full of the people I love most in the world and realized the loneliest I had felt all week was two minutes earlier, scrolling that silent thread with my thumb, present in the room and absent everywhere else at the same time. I have been sober eleven years, and I used to assume loneliness was simply a math problem,...

The Package Tracking Number That Hasn't Moved in Nine Days I ordered a part for the washing machine online, nothing dramatic, a forty dollar valve that was supposed to arrive in four business days. On day five I checked the tracking number and it said "in transit," which sounded fine until I checked it again on day seven and it still said "in transit," the same words, no new scan, no new city, like the package had been swallowed somewhere between the warehouse and my front porch. By day nine I had refreshed that page probably thirty times, not because refreshing it ever changed anything, but because the not knowing had started to feel worse than whatever the actual answer turned out to be. My wife finally asked me why I kept pulling my phone out at dinner, and I realized I could not explain it to her without admitting how much smaller doubts like this one can still get under my skin. I have been sober ten years, long enough that I use...