The Porch Light I Still Flip On at Nine Every Night for No One Coming Home RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 15, 2026 My wife has been gone three years now, and I still reach for the porch light switch every night around nine, the same time I used to flip it on so she could see the steps coming up from her shift at the hospital. There is no one coming up those steps anymore. My son lives two states away and calls on Sundays if he remembers, which is most Sundays, and I am grateful for that, but Sunday is not every night, and nine o'clock is not Sunday. I flip the switch anyway. I have told myself it is for safety, in case a neighbor needs to see the house number, but I know better. I am still lighting a porch for somebody who is not walking up to it, because some old habit in me has not caught up yet to how empty the house actually is. I am twelve years sober, and for most of those years I measured loneliness the way I measured everything else, by whether anyone w...