The other day, I was chatting with someone when it happened—that familiar tightening I hadn’t felt in a while. My fists were clenched. My shoulders were high. My mind felt foggy and overworked. And suddenly I recognized it. My body was telling me something it has told me before. The feeling was eerily similar to the mental exhaustion I carried during the height of COVID. Not the same circumstances, not the same level of isolation—but the same deep weariness that comes from wo

An AI generated epic toy battle! Every so often, when I drive down 13th Street heading toward downtown Salem, Oregon, a neighboring city, I pass a house with a fenced yard that faces the street. Inside the yard are large Transformers, action figures, and dolls. Every time I pass by, they’re in different positions—locked in new poses, new standoffs, new imagined clashes. It’s clear the children who live there are staging an epic battle. Good versus evil. Heroes and villains. T

Our kids are watching us in this moment. Today is Epiphany—January 6—the day the church proclaims that God pulls back the curtain. Epiphany is about revelation: light breaking through, truth made visible, God showing up in places that are shadowed, dreary, and hate-filled. It is the season when we dare to say that light still shines, even when the world feels dangerous and unclear. But Epiphany has always carried tension. Entangled in that story of starlight and revelation is