The Sports Betting App I Reinstalled Last Night at 11:40 RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 13, 2026 I deleted the app Sunday afternoon, the way I have probably a dozen times this year, pressing my thumb down on the icon until it wiggled and watching it disappear with something close to relief. By last night I had it back on my phone by 11:40, logged in, scrolling the lines on a college game I do not even follow, telling myself I was only looking, the same lie I used to tell walking into a liquor store "just to see what they had." I did not place a bet, but that is not the same thing as not being tempted. I sat there in the dark, thumb hovering, until I finally closed it and lay awake another hour, ashamed of how close eleven months of not betting had come to ending over a game I did not even care about. I am eleven months clean from gambling and nineteen years sober from drinking, and if you had told me a decade ago the drink would loosen its grip before the...

The Check Engine Light That's Been On for Six Days RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 13, 2026 The orange check engine light came on six days ago, somewhere between the school drop off and the highway on ramp, and I have driven past the shop on my street every single morning since without pulling in. The truck does not knock. It does not smell like anything burning. It starts every time I turn the key, runs smooth at seventy, gets me where I am going. The only thing wrong with it, as far as I can tell from the driver's seat, is that small orange light sitting there on the dash, and some mornings I think I would almost rather it start sputtering so I would have an excuse to finally deal with it. Instead it just sits there, patient and silent, reminding me every time I start the engine that something underneath the hood needs attention I keep deciding not to give it. I am four years sober, and I used to think anxiety would always look like the night before a cour...

The Garage Sale Sign I Took Down Before Noon RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 12, 2026 I spent Friday night pricing things I was sure somebody would want, a computer desk, two bikes my kids outgrew years ago, a box of old VHS tapes. I had the tables out by seven Saturday morning, hand lettered signs taped to the stop sign at both ends of the street, coffee in hand, feeling the small, specific hope a man feels when he thinks he has planned a good morning. By eleven thirty, three cars had stopped, and two of those were just turning around in my driveway. By noon I was pulling my own signs back down, folding the tables, and carrying the computer desk back into the garage, feeling foolish for having hoped at all over a garage sale. It was never really about the desk or the ten dollars I would have gotten for it. It was about how quietly a small hope can collapse without announcing itself first. I am fifteen years sober, and for most of those years I assumed the disappoin...

The Second Toothbrush I Still Keep in the Cup by the Sink RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 12, 2026 My wife has been gone three years now, not from this life, just from this house, and I still keep her toothbrush standing in the cup by the sink next to mine. I have replaced my own twice since she left. Hers has gone soft and yellow at the bristles, and I know exactly how foolish that looks to anyone who opens that cabinet besides me, but I have never once reached in and thrown it away. It is such a small thing to hold onto, a two dollar piece of plastic, and some nights it is the only proof left in the house that somebody else used to stand exactly where I am standing now. I am six years sober, and for a long time I told people the hardest part of getting clean was the shame. What nobody warned me about was the ache waiting on the other side of it, the one that shows up on a random Tuesday with nobody in the house to ask about my day, nobody's keys landing in the...

I was standing at the self-checkout machine at the grocery store Saturday afternoon, scanning a cart full of ordinary things, cereal, dish soap, a bag of apples, when I ran a candy bar across the scanner and it did not beep. No red light, no little chirp, no price appearing on the screen. I knew exactly what had happened, the barcode had slid past the sensor at the wrong angle, and I had maybe one full second to decide what to do about it. I looked up. Nobody was watching. The attendant was three lanes down helping somebody with a coupon. I set the candy bar in the bag with the apples and kept scanning, and the whole transaction rang up without it, and I walked out of that store having paid for everything except the one thing I had quietly decided not to mention. It was a dollar and thirty-nine cents. I want to be honest about how small that number is, because the smallness is exactly what should have told me something was wrong with how fast I moved past it. I am eleven years sobe...

The Drive-Thru Speaker That Said "Take Your Time" Three Times Before I Ordered I sat in my truck at the drive-thru last night for what felt like an embarrassingly long time, staring at a menu board I have looked at a hundred times, unable to choose between two sandwiches I have ordered a hundred times before. The kid on the speaker said "take your time" the first time kindly enough. By the third time there was a thin edge of confusion under the politeness, like he was wondering if something was wrong with the truck, or the driver. Nothing was wrong, not really. I had simply spent the whole day making decisions, which shirt, which lane, which email to answer first, which version of a difficult sentence to say to my son, and by six o'clock the part of me that chooses things had nothing left in the tank. A sandwich should not be a crisis. That night it nearly was. I am five years sober, and for most of those years I assumed the hard decisions were the ones th...

The Coffee Maker I Set for 4:30 and Shut Off Before It Finishes Brewing RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 11, 2026 My coffee maker has a timer, and most nights I still set it for 4:30 the way I have for years, because that is when a working man gets up if he wants to beat the traffic and still have a few quiet minutes before the house wakes. Lately, though, I have started padding down the hall in the dark, hearing the machine gurgling to life right on schedule, and reaching over to shut it off before it finishes. I go back to bed for another hour, not because I am sleeping in that hour, but because I cannot make myself face the day a minute earlier than I have to. I am not hungover anymore. I have not had a drink in nine years. I am just tired in a way that sleep does not seem to touch, the kind of tired that sits behind my eyes at two in the afternoon and follows me into bed at ten at night, so that I wake up already owing somebody something. I used to think exhausti...