The Anniversary Trip We Had to Cancel Three Days Before We Left RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 16, 2026 We had saved for almost a year, a cabin on the coast for our thirtieth anniversary, the kind of trip we always said we would take someday and never actually booked until this spring. I had the confirmation email printed and folded into my wallet like a man carrying proof of something good finally happening to him. Three days before we were supposed to leave, my wife's mother fell in her own kitchen and broke her hip, and there was no question in either of our minds about where we were going to be instead. I called the cabin and canceled it myself, standing in a hospital hallway, and the woman on the phone was kind about the refund and none of that kindness touched the particular ache of watching something I had wanted for a year disappear in a four-minute phone call. I am seven years sober, and for a long time I thought disappointment was a small feeling, one...

The Text From My Son's School That Just Said "Please Call the Office" It came in at 1:52 on a Wednesday afternoon, no name attached, just the school's main number and five words with no period at the end. No mention of hurt or sick or fine. Just the request itself, sitting there on a lock screen while I was standing in a parts aisle holding a furnace filter I no longer cared about. I called back within ten seconds and got a busy signal, and in the ninety seconds it took me to redial I had already buried my son in my mind three separate times and pulled him back out again, each version worse than the last, none of them based on a single actual fact. It turned out to be nothing. He had left his inhaler at home and the nurse wanted a parent to bring one by before recess. I stood in that parts aisle afterward with my heart still going, embarrassed at how far my own mind had run on five words and a missing period. I am nine years sober, and anxi...