While I was growing up, on many Sunday mornings, my family would eat coffee soup.

I was twenty-six. Having recently moved cross-country, leaving the long summers of South Texas for the short ones of Pennsylvania, I was learning many new customs in this new culture.

This is not us!

All my adult life, I’ve carried extra weight.

I never know what messages you are hearing from others, from yourself, from the voice of the deceiver.

My nephew David made the ideal, last-minute case for our family picture the night before we moved to Costa Rica two and a half years ago.

I love words! They unlock meaning if you study them out. A word recently blew up in my face.

There was a famous golfer who was visiting the king of a country. The king wanted to give him a gift, so he asked him what he liked.

We were enjoying a couple of days at the beach with some new friends, Dan and Chloe. On the final morning, they invited us to try surfing.

As followers of Christ, we have been given a spirit of power, a spirit of love, and a spirit of self-control. We have not been given spirits of fear.

Stop me when this sounds familiar. I got a text from a worship director. It said, “I wanted to tell you that my wife felt ill and tested positive for COVID, so tomorrow I can’t be with you.”

I sat in a meeting surrounded by 18 other worship team members from our church.

We made it! 2020 is 99% in the rearview mirror. Phew!

I want to invite you into hope. Into a world with less anxiety. Into a less distracted, more purposeful, wildly optimistic living.

This year has been both a punch to the gut and a kick in the pants. How are you responding?

Losing our normal, hurts. We had rhythms. We had reasonably certain expectations. How should we, as worshiping Christians, grieve our loss of normalcy?

I love worshiping with blind trust.

Maybe we feel disoriented because God is trying to reorient us.

As churches, we’ve been forced to rethink virtually everything about our weekly gathering rhythms.

“You tend to feel in control of your life when our wills are in harmony.” - God (via Sarah Young)

Control. Remember that feeling?

We made it! To a whole new decade.

But do you have hope?