Writers Note: Re-edited (8/8/26) to include deeper dive into why "Messy Middle" and Posture fit into my exploration of Psalm 100. There are some seasons when gratitude comes easily. When the prayer is answered, the relationship is restored, the diagnosis is good, or life simply seems to be going our way, thanking God doesn't require much effort. But what about the seasons when it doesn't? What about the unanswered prayer, the complicated relationship, the disappointment that still hurts, or the questions we carry without any easy answers? What do we do with gratitude when life is still messy? That is one of the reasons I have been thinking differently about Psalm 100 lately. We tend to read Psalm 100 as a simple call to thanksgiving, and it certainly is that. But I think there is something deeper happening. Psalm 100 is giving us a posture for living when life is not yet what we hope it will be. That is what I mean by the Messy Middle. We are living between the broken...

  I've been working through a book on writing poetry, and one of the prompts simply said,   Write a letter to your younger self.   I wasn't expecting where it would take me. As I wrote, I found myself speaking to the little boy who lived in a house that many people probably thought was normal enough. What most people couldn't see was the abuse my siblings and I endured, the neglect, the chaos created by addiction, and the constant message that I specifically was unwanted and always would be. It was so deeply embedded that one her death bed my mother stated that in her mind I didn’t even exist. Those are heavy words to write, but they are part of my story. The poem isn't about pretending those years didn't happen. Trauma doesn't disappear because enough time passes or because life becomes good. Some days those memories feel far away while on other days they arrive without warning, carried by a smell, a sound, or a feeling that suddenly makes the past feel painful...

Lately I've found myself thinking a lot about revival. I really do want to see God breathe new life into His Church. I want to see people discover hope, relationships restored, and churches become places where people encounter Jesus in ways that change their lives. But I've also started wondering if we've been looking for revival in all the wrong places. We spend so much time looking out the window that we rarely stop to look in the mirror. We live in a culture that seems obsessed with identifying what's wrong with everyone else. Politics is the problem. Culture is the problem. The church down the street is the problem. The people who vote differently, worship differently, or see the world differently are the problem. If I'm honest, Christians aren't immune to that way of thinking either. Sometimes we're so busy talking about what God needs to do in someone else's life that we never stop long enough to ask what He wants to do in ours. That's why Psal...