The calendar turns without asking our permission. One day becomes another. A year becomes a memory. We name the change, but we do not control it. And sometimes the space between December and January feels less like a celebration and more like a deep breath we were not sure we could take.

If 2025 was a year of transition, then I am praying that 2026 will be a year of hope and consistency. Not the loud kind of hope that ignores pain, but the quiet kind that stays when pain has already spoken. Not consistency as routine for its own sake, but consistency as faithfulness practiced one ordinary day at a time.

Transitions have a way of rearranging the furniture of your soul. In 2025, mine was rearranged more than once. My mother passed away. Grief does not move on a schedule. It comes in waves, sometimes gentle, sometimes unannounced. Her absence still feels strange. There are moments when I catch myself wanting to call her, and then I remember. Loss teaches you that love does not end. It simply changes where it lives.

That same year, I resigned as an executive vice president sensing God’s call back to the pastorate without a clear place to land. Titles and plans tend to give us the illusion of control. Letting go of them feels like stepping off a ledge, trusting there will be ground beneath your feet. I did not know what was next. I only knew what obedience required in that moment. Faith rarely hands you a map. More often, it asks for the next step.

Then came a call to Bethel Baptist Church, a church I had never heard of. It is humbling to realize how small your world really is, and how large God’s work continues to be beyond it. I learned again that calling is not about familiarity. It is about trust. Sometimes God writes the story forward by asking you to leave the paragraph you understand.

What followed was an extended season of in between. For 10 plus weeks, I lived with one foot in one place and one foot in another. Flying back and forth each week, trying to serve both a college and a church well, I learned how thin a person can feel when life stretches them across miles and expectations. There is a special fatigue that comes from being present everywhere and fully settled nowhere.

Through all of it, my wife Jenny was the steady center. While I traveled, she carried the weight of home. She kept routines intact, hearts reassured, and details managed. In the middle of all this, she also planned our daughter’s wedding. That kind of strength rarely announces itself. It shows up early, stays late, and asks for little recognition. God often answers our prayers for stability by placing faithful people beside us.

Transitions are teachers, but they are not meant to be permanent instructors. They show us what we cling to when certainty is stripped away. They remind us that God is not only present in the next chapter, but in the waiting between chapters. Still, the soul eventually longs for rhythm. For familiar prayers. For predictable faithfulness. For the quiet joy of doing the next right thing again and again.

That is why I hope 2026 will be marked by consistency. The new year does not erase the old one. It carries it forward. Grief, uncertainty, and obedience all come with us. But so does grace. And sometimes, the most hopeful thing we can say is this: I will keep walking. I will keep trusting. I will keep showing up.

That feels like a good way to begin again.