hope – Erin Ulerich

Searching for God’s Fingerprints in Everyday Life

If you could be like any detective, who would it be?

Would you be Maxwell Smart from the TV series Get Smart? He had plenty of gadgets, was sometimes distracted by his gadgets, was bumbling and clueless at times, but eventually got the bad guy in the end.

Or would you prefer to be like Sherlock Holmes? Stealthy, logical, highly intelligent, a master at finding hidden clues.

If I were to choose a detective that is most like me, I would choose a certain female detective who is well known by the 4 and below age group.

Dora the Explorer.

Other than the fact that she is animated, and Hispanic, and a child, we have lots in common. We both like to sing. We both like backpacks. Neither of us can read a map. But mainly, it’s the fact that in each episode the clues are right in front of her and she still needs help from the audience.

Yep. That’s definitely me.

Last week I encouraged you to look for God’s fingerprints in your life – evidence that He is with you in every moment and in every situation.

Looking for God’s fingerprints in our everyday lives is a skill to be learned. And once we get the hang of it, we will discover, like Dora, that His fingerprints have been right in front of us all along.

Why is this important?

If we learn to see His fingerprints in the moments of our days, we will begin to believe that we are not alone. And believing that we are not alone changes the way we see life.

It’s easy to begin. We can start with a simple prayer: God, help me to see You in my everyday life. Open my eyes and help me see that I am not alone.

I created a place to list the ways you see His fingerprints in your everyday life. Writing down helps us remember. It also gives us a record to go back and look at on the days when we are discouraged or weighed down.

Where can I see His fingerprints, you might ask. Where is the evidence that He is with me?

His kindness is evident through the simple, good things that all men enjoy: the rain, the beauty of a sunrise, a stranger’s smile. Happiness, goodness, celebration.

These things are not reserved only for those who trust God, but are given to all people, even those who are enemies of God. He is patient and merciful towards those who reject Him.

2.The way He restrains evil and sin in our world. As crazy as things are, they would be even worse if He did not hold back the tide of sin and evil.

3. The way God gives all people the ability to function within a society or in community: to care for one another and to show love and compassion to each other. The fact that we understand innately that some things are good and some things are evil and harmful is evidence that He is with us.

When we acknowledge that God concerns Himself with every aspect of life we will see Him working in all aspects of our life.

God, help me to see You in my everyday life. Open my eyes and help me see that I am not alone.

I’d love to know the ways God answers this simple prayer in your life. Share about it on social media and use #Christmasineverydaylife so you can encourage others.

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus: Where Freedom is Found

What keeps you up at night?

Sometimes it’s too much caffeine for me. Sometimes it’s the anticipation of the next day.

But most of the time it’s because I’m feeling fearful or anxious about something. I rack my brain, trying to figure things out or trying to make sense of crazy circumstances.

And instead of finding solutions, I just lose sleep.

Dr. Dan Allender puts it this way in Hope When You Are Hurting, “But life is disturbing, and we struggle with what God is up to.“

Can I get an Amen on that?

How many times have you thought those very words, how many times have I said them? “God, what are you doing?” As hard as we try, there are times when we cannot figure out what God is up to.

Life is hard to figure out.

We live within layers of life, where things are happening simultaneously around us, to us, and by us, while we try to make sense of it all. When we try to figure it all out, we default to a formula where our life experiences shape our definition of who God is and whether He loves us.

Good things happening = God is good and happy with us.

Bad things happening = God is bad, weak, or mad at us.

This formula looks simple and easy to follow. But life cannot be lived through a formula. Life is complex and complicated, a mix of joy and sorrow at any given moment.

Instead of a formula, we must live by truth. This truth is a great place to start: We were not made to live in fear. The opposite of fear is trust.

Jesus came to set us free from the fears that keep us up at night. From the sin patterns that keep us feeling distant from God, We can find our rest in Him.

“He restores my soul.” (Psalm 23:3)

The word for restores that is used here means to turn away. The Lord turns our soul away. Not away from Him, but away from the things that harm our soul. He turns our soul back toward Him, where it is protected and safe.

God is constant and unchanging, while life around us swirls in chaos.

Instead of letting our life experiences shape our definition of who God is and whether He loves us, what would it look like if we let who God is and His love for us shape our definition of our life experiences? This idea is more than playing around with words. The difference between these two is the difference between hope and despair. I’ve experienced it in my own life.

The more we know Him, the more we know His tender love for us, the more we can trust His hand in our lives, even when we don’t understand what He is doing.

This life begins the process of being set free, of being released from our sins and fears, and of finding our rest in God. The process will be complete the moment we step into His presence, face to face at last.

If you enjoyed this post, I know you will enjoy the devotions in my new book, In Unexpected Ways: Christmas in Everyday Life. Available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback. This is an affiliate link.

This post is also available in video form on my YouTube Channel.

Friendship, Fiction, and These Uncertain Times

Today I am THRILLED to welcome Weez Phillips, author of *The Lightest, Heaviest Things.*

The Lightest, Heaviest Things is a middle-grade fantasy about giants and healing rifts between worlds. In addition to giants, there is an adorable troll named Ull, magic, and two best friends who are figuring out the quest thing as they go. They do discover that snacks are very important while quest-ing.

As a parent, I love the way Weez portrays the relationship between the two friends. They are typical middle-grade girls, jumping to conclusions, doubting their own abilities, and assuming the other has the perfect life. Throughout the story, they grow, their friendship deepens, and they begin seeing life through the other’s eyes.

Weez agreed to share a few thoughts about the theme of friendship and the reaction of her characters to living during uncertain times, two things that are very relatable in these days of 2020.

One of the themes that runs through TLHT is friendship. Peri and Wink are very different and yet they are close. What difficulties come up because of their differences, and how do they resolve them?

I like to think of Peri as being a person who almost feels too deeply. She’s very driven by emotion, and by reaction. Wink, on the other hand, is more logical and serious–and maybe doesn’t allow for emotions as much as she should. This puts a communication barrier between them. Another thing putting a communication barrier between them is their different lifestyles, their different backgrounds. Peri is an only child whose parents often aren’t home. Wink comes from a large, loud family, where at least one parent is always present. It’s hard for them to understand each other because of these differences. But I actually think the biggest barrier between them is their terror of being hurt or of hurting each other. They begin learning to resolve the conflict as they discover more about themselves and the world around them. They learn to be open and honest with each other, and this certainly begins the work of breaking down walls.

If you could sit these two characters down and give them friendship advice, what would it be?

I would encourage them to continue being honest with each other, and to be intentional about talking to each other–but also to give each other space. It’s important to be able to exist both on your own and with others.

What does TLHT have to say about living in uncertain times?
A lot is uncertain in the world Peri and Wink find themselves in. I don’t want to go into detail because of spoilers, but I will say that things seem pretty strange and bleak for them. But they learn that they can be brave, that they can be strong–that they need to work together and remember the good. They learn to go bravely–but also to be bravely. To live life on a founding principle of braveness. They are not alone, and hope can still be found.

The Lightest, Heaviest Things is available on Amazon.

Weez also designed The Lightest, Heaviest Things merchandise. Stickers, pins, T-shirts, and more.

Read reviews of The Lightest, Heaviest Things from the 2020 blog tour:

The Lightest, Heaviest Things; a review

The Lightest, Heaviest Things by Weez Phillips – Book Review

Go Bravely

Welcoming The Lightest, Heaviest Things into the World

it’s beginning, it’s beginning, it’s beginning

because pop tarts from a gas station taste better than pop tarts from a grocery store

Weez Phillips is a Christian homeschooled student living with her family in the Deep South. If you ask her how she’s doing, she’s likely to cry a bit and then spout contradicting statements before wandering off in search of fruit (nature’s fast food).

Better Than Wishes

Are you feeling Corona weary these days?

I asked that question during Mug to Mug a few weeks ago, and I was met with a resounding YES!!!

These days I can relate to the moment in The Lord of the Rings when Frodo admitted to Gandalf “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”

We could fill in Frodo’s statement with many, many things from our own lives, couldn’t we?

“I wish _______ had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”

J.R.R. Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings during World War I. I can imagine that this thought came to mind as he crouched in trenches, fought, and lost friends in battles.

In fairy tales wishes are made and granted all the time. Sometimes the wishes have strings attached, or the things wished for aren’t really what is best. Characters in fairy tales, and people in real life, make wishes based on comfort level, and on what is seen.

Thankfully, we have something far better than wishes. We have God’s promises. God’s promises are made with the very best for us in mind and they take into account future events that we have no way of knowing.

So what do we do when our wishes don’t match with His promises? When the working out of His promises in our life doesn’t look anything like we thought it would?

We place our trust in the unchanging nature and character of God.

We seek out comfort and avoid conflict, but God often calls us into situations and places that are uncomfortable and filled with conflict. He brings us into places where all we can do is trust Him. Maybe He knows that in trusting Him, we will know Him more deeply. And that, besides seeing us face to face, is His heart’s desire.

Take a moment to read this beautiful description of the intersection between our wishes and His precious promises.

My Wishes and His Promises
God has promised me His eternal life, but not a long life.
God has promised me perfect health on the new earth, but not on this earth.
God has promised me His comfort, but not a life without pain.
God has promised me His righteousness, but not righteous people.
God has promised me His home in heaven, but not a house on earth.
God has promised me His wedding feast, but not a spouse.
God has promised me His joy, but not a life without sorrow.
God has promised me His justice, but not human justice.
God has promised me His power, but not a life without weakness.
God has promised me His sufficiency, but not a life with no needs.
God has promised me His wisdom, but not a life without questions.
God has promised me His guidance, but not a life without confusion.
God has promised me His victory, but not a life without conflict.
God has promised me His presence, but not a life without loneliness.
God has promised me His vengeance, but not a life without forgiving.
God has promised me His grace, but not a life without repentance.
God has promised me His blessing, but not a life without obedience.
God has promised me His reward, but not a life without a race.
God has promised me His love, but not a life without rejection.
God has promised me His peace, but not a life without turmoil.
God has promised me His faithfulness, but not a life without faith.
Peter Reid, General Director of Torchbearers International (Jan.2020)

Let’s Talk! Where you are hanging on more tightly to your wishes than to His promises? Are those the areas in your life you have trouble trusting God with?

What are your thoughts on this quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer ? “God sent His Son not to fulfill my wishes, but His promises.”

If you would like an artsy copy of “My Wishes and His Promises” click here to get one designed by @themakingsofjoy. Then run over to Instagram and see what else she does. She’s one talented lady!

It’s Okay to Say

I feel like we are in the messy middle of COVID-19. At least we are here in Mississippi, where we might be hitting a flatter curve as I type this, but our numbers aren’t decreasing enough to say the curve is going down.

In the beginning everything was #inthistogether, but right now #wedontknow feels more honest.

We are used to gathering facts from experts and drawing conclusions from those facts. But that is not the way things are working right now. There are no experts because we are all living through this in real time, and “this” doesn’t even look the same for each person. The whole world feels stuck in a crazy experiment where data is still being gathered before any hypothesis can be tested. We want concrete answers and there just aren’t any.

So what do you do when there are endless opinions being thrown around, and every 100%-for-sure-fact is proven inaccurate within 24 hours? You learn that it’s okay to say a few important things.

It’s ok to say “This is a really strange time.” We can acknowledge that little about 2020 has been predictable or planned.

It’s ok to say “I don’t know.”

I feel like I say that to my kids all day long. ” What will school look like in the fall?” “When can we go roller skating or shopping or to the movies? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

For real. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that what we know changes every single day.

And here’s the truth: We know what we know today, and our decisions reflect that knowledge. Will our knowledge tomorrow or next week look different? Yes. But we can’t make today’s decisions based on next week’s knowledge. All we can do is the best we can with the information we have.

It’s okay to say “I don’t feel comfortable with this.”

Beneath the uproar on either side of the “to re-open or not to re-open” dilemma, I am hearing a constant need for direction. During this time, we can find direction by paying attention to what is best for our situation and giving others grace to do the same.

I learned this during another unplanned, unexpected, uncertain time in my life. For a few years one of my daughters experienced seizures. Some were caused by fever, some were unexplained. So, whenever an illness went around that caused fever, we stayed home. If my daughter seemed off, or things weren’t quite right, we stayed home. I couldn’t control the seizures, so I controlled what I could to keep my girl safe.

When I put my head on my pillow at night, I had peace that I had done everything I knew to do. As we tracked her seizures, I learned more, and my decisions reflected that knowledge.

Did I disappoint people when I canceled plans? Did I look wishy-washy to others? Yes to both. But I learned to trust my knowledge of our situation, I learned that others recover from disappointment, and that disappointing others isn’t fatal.

It’s okay to say “I’m not okay right now.”

During any given day, I can go from describing this extra time with my family as awesome, awful, and every shade between. I can watch the news, trusting in God’s sovereignty and feeling overwhelmingly anxious during one news story. Emotions are complex, especially during uncertain times. Reaching out to others to tell them that you’ve had a rough day really helps.

One thing I do know is that uncertain times don’t last forever. This messy middle will eventually give way to the end, and this true for COVID-19 as well. What we learn from this time, how we allow this time to shape us, that is what will last.

#livingboldlyinabrokenworld isn’t easy, but it is possible. When storms swirl all around us, it’s difficult to keep our eyes fixed on God’s truth. I’ve gathered the truths that help me through the storms of life into a pdf, Truths that Anchor in the Storm. These verses aren’t lifeboats, pulling me out of the storm, they are anchors to help me stand inside the storm. I hope they will help you as well. Click on the side bar to receive your copy today.

When God and Granny Clampett Agree on Vittles

“Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you.” Psalm55:22

On the Beverly Hillbillies, Granny was always offering people vittles, and usually the description of said vittles made people turn up their noses. But Granny’s heart was in the right place. She knew people needed food to live, and she loved providing for them.

Did you know that God gives us vittles too? Ok, it’s actually spelled victuals, though still pronounced vittles. But in Psalm 55:22, when it says He will sustain you, the word for sustain carries the idea of nourishing us, giving us food or provision. You know, victuals.

When he sustains us, He doesn’t give us just enough to keep our head above the water, He gives what we need to walk boldly in this broken world. He knows the difficulty of navigating circumstances and relationships. He walked through this world, and He understands.

How does that hit you today? Are you feeling overwhelmed, lost, or unseen? When we give our burdens to the Lord, He will hold us, guide us, hear us, be present with us.

And the word for cast? It carries the idea of throwing, hurling, to throw out, down, or away. It’s a very active word. The Lord invites us to hurl our burdens on him. To throw them away from us. To stop trying to carry them.

Casting our burdens on the Lord means we are trading the heaviness in our soul for abundant nourishment for our soul. We are trading anxiety for peace. We are trading fear for trust.

Casting off and trusting in God takes courage. It takes believing that God is who He says He is, and that He will keep His promise to sustain.

When we fling our arms out wide to cast our burdens on the Lord, we are then free to wrap our arms around Him. We cast so that we can cling.

As we cling to Him, He wraps His strong arms around us, and sustains us in every sense of the word. He isn’t stingy, like we sometimes secretly believe he is. He gives like a loving parent. He gives the vittles our soul needs in the deepest places.

Change Begins with Truth

She was sitting beside the Dean’s office when I walked by.

“How are you today?” I didn’t really expect a reply, but she surprised me.

“I’m waiting to see the Dean.”

“That doesn’t sound good. What’s going on?”

She described a fight she started, and described her background of getting into fights.

“I don’t want to keep getting into fights,but I don’t know how to stop. When I’m angry everything I’ve learned at counseling just goes out the window.” Tears welled up in her deep brown eyes. “I want to change, but I don’t know how.”

Oh wow. I can totally relate to that frustration. What about you?

Change is hard, isn’t it? And any time we introduce a habit in our life that falls in the general category of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control, you’d better believe there will be a fight.

Those are called fruit of the Spirit because it takes the power of God living inside us to help us replace our natural reactions with these.

Change isn’t easy, but it is worth pursuing.

You know what else is hard to do? Trusting God with what is going on right now, today, in our lives.

It seems easier to trust Him with our salvation than to believe that He acts in our everyday lives as part of that salvation. It seems easier to believe that He died on the cross to pay for our collective sins than to believe that this same act offers forgiveness for the ugly sins that I’m stumbling over today.

The hope that God offers, the hope He created us for, leads us to trust Him, and trusting Him gives us peace and stability in this crazy, broken world.

The hope that God offers is grounded in who He is, which has a direct impact on the way we view God, ourselves, and the world around us.

Fear keeps us in survival mode, but walking in the hope we are created for is life-giving and refreshing. How does that sound? Like a change for the better, right?

Truths to Stand On is a PDF I’ve developed to help you start walking in the hope God offers by describing ways these four characteristics of God can impact the way you live.

God’s Love *God’s Presence * God’s Provision *God’s Protection

To receive Truths to Stand On, simply fill out the form on the sidebar of this post. If you are already a subscriber, please email me at erinulerich@gmail.com or comment below and I will send you the PDF right away.

And my friend in front of the Dean’s office? With time, a teachable heart, and a stready stream of truth in her life, she could step out of the survival mode she is stuck in and begin walking in the hope she was made for.

The Path of Grief, the Way of Hope

The January wind blew harsh on my face as I studied the line of trees stretching across the parking lot. Their branches had no leaves, but were loaded with small, hard, dark brown balls.

The trees matched the weather – bare, stark, hard. And the weather matched my heart as it trudged along the winding path of grief.

Grief is like a raging storm scattered with lightning bolts. These short bursts of light in the darkness momentarily reveal the deepest parts of our soul. These short bursts of light shake us to our core and let us know if what we are holding onto is strong enough to stretch into eternity. Like a lightning bolt slicing a mighty oak, grief splits through the distractions and barriers in our lives and brings us face to face with the reality that if we are without God then we are without hope.

But in the hands of God, grief mingles with hope. Loss and life intertwine.

In the midst of grief, hope reminds us that we were created with eternity in our hearts. We were created for more than this life could ever offer.

Hope comforts our hearts with the truth that our loved ones are with the Lord.
But even that comfort reminds us of our loss because if they are with the Lord, they are not with us. At the same time, there is also great encouragement. If they are with the Lord, we will see them again. The loss, though painful, is not permanent.

And what are we to do as we live in this in-between?

We are to walk the path of grief, so that hope can have its way in us.

God uses grief to touch places of our hearts that would otherwise remain unchanged. Grief is messy and uncomfortable, and the path of grief takes time. If we try to rush through grief, we will miss the hope.

“In western Christian culture, we’ve been conditioned to hide sadness, cover up weakness, and put a strong and cheerful face forward. We hide our grief for fear that others will mistake it for ingratitude. We bury our lament before it’s finished because we’ve been told there’s an open window somewhere that we should be focusing on instead.
And yet, when I look at Scripture, I see welcomed space for these things. There are no time limits or cut-off dates placed over them. Jeremiah does this beautifully in Lamentations 3. While the chapter ends with hope, there’s nothing of platitude in his writing.” Tasha Jun
In God’s hands, grief builds our trust in Him, strengthens our faith, and teaches us to walk in hope through this broken world because we know that a time is coming when all things will be made right.
The harsh January wind won’t always blow. Eventually, the warmth of the sun and the gentle spring breeze will coax the hard balls on the trees to reveal the delicate buds hidden inside. These buds will open, covering the trees with a explosion of white flowers, as if to celebrate being made new.
Loss and life. Grief and hope.

The Weight of Guilt, the Need of a Savior

The Reagan family on Blue Bloods are my people, my almost-family. When Jamie worked undercover, I worried like a big sister. I celebrated when he and Edie got engaged, and I’m still mad at the writers for the tragic death of Danny’s wife, Linda.

And the daughter’s name is Erin, so that makes us practically family, right?

Now,they are very different from my real family. We live in Mississippi, they live in New York. We have relatively safe jobs, they are in law enforcement. But the bond between them reminds me of my family, the way the siblings are all so different, and the way they love each other deep down, even when they don’t agree.

I also love how this show uses the power of story to show both sides of real situations that can’t always be solved before the end credits.

In Season 8, episode 9, a man was released after serving his time in jail. He moved into an apartment building, ready to re-start his life, but no one wanted him there.

You see, he had been in prison for molesting children, and the apartment building he moved into had many children. He ends up being severely beaten by one of the dads in the building, and at the end of the episode he tells Erin and Danny, “I did my time, but I’m still guilty. There’s no absolution for what I’ve done.”

The years he spent in jail fulfilled the consequences the justice system deemed appropriate. But those years did not replace what he had taken from those children. It didn’t free him from guilt in other people’s eyes, or even his own. The court said he was free, but he was more trapped outside of jail than he had ever been inside.

The law uses the words guilty and free, but our hearts carry the weight of those words. In reality, the world offered him no hope, no solution. He was ruined, stuck, and helpless to change that status.

And this is exactlywhere the enemy of our soul wants us. He dangles temptation in front of us, promises that we will be liked, respected, found worthy if we listen to him. He is called the deceiver of the whole world because he gets us to this stuck place and offers no way out from the weight of our sin.

Satan deceives us, traps us, and leaves us there.

There is a weight to sin. Guilt feels heavy on our shoulders and in our gut. We want to feel clean again. We want to erase the guilt, to undo the things we’ve done. But we can’t. We are like a kid with muddy hands trying to wipe mud off of a clean sheet. No matter how hard we try, we just keep spreading the mud around.

We need a refuge from the weight, we need a safe place, protection from our accuser.

The world can’t offer us refuge.

But God can because He is our refuge.

The world can’t offer us a way to erase our guilt.

But God can, because He sent a Person to remove our guilt.

The world can’t offer forgiveness or redemption.

But God can, because he sent a Redeemer.

The character in Blue Bloods was right. There is no absolution apart from Christ. In Christ there is forgiveness, there is absolution, there is moving forward.

The Gospel is called the Good News because it breaks the sin cycle we are stuck in. The only action that offers forgiveness and accomplishes absolution is the work of Jesus – His perfect life, His death on the cross that paid for our sins. The Gospel is the answer to our entrapment. It is Good News because it sets us free – the way we were meant to live.

“Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it. He came into history from the outside of history; He did not evolve out of history. Our Lord’s birth was an advent; He did not come from the human race, He came into it from above. Jesus Christ is not the best human being; He is a Being Who cannot be accounted for by the human race at all. He is God incarnate; not man becoming God, but God coming into human flesh, coming into it from the outside. ” – – Oswald Chambers, The Psychology of Redemption

Fighting For Hope Through Waves of Grief

Missing Robert

Grief is a tricky beast. It hides and makes you think you’ve “dealt”, you’ve “moved on”, and then it hits out of nowhere like a tsunami on a sunny day.

We don’t talk about him very much, but we miss him.

I miss the way he said “Well, hello there!” when he called around this time each year to get ideas for the kids’ Christmas presents.

Over the past 2 years, there have been plenty of What ifs, plenty of What could have been done conversations, but the bottom line is that while he didn’t he make the choice to die from his drug use, he made the decision to use drugs.

He made the decision to refuse help. “No program is going to help me,” he said, and that is when I knew he had decided to stop fighting for hope.

It was a decision that defied logic. He had been clean for years, so many years that my children only knew the fun Uncle Robert.

The Uncle Robert who helped them catch fireflies in the summer and who shot a zillion fireworks with them on New Year’s Eve.

It was a decision that led down a dark path, a path filled with cover-ups, half truths, and out right lies.

It was a decision that robbed us of our brother, friend, uncle, and son.

It was also a decision borne out of a daily battle to stay on the right path, a million unseen, un-applauded decisions made over the years of being sober. A battle he fought on his own.

He didn’t have to fight alone. We, his family, would have loved to celebrate victories with him. We would have loved to applaud his successes.

But we didn’t see the burden he carried until it was too late.

By the time we saw, his mind had already been turned upside down. By then, he had bought the lie that our words of hope and encouragement hid ulterior motives and that his drug dealer friends were the only ones who could be trusted.

Isn’t that the biggest twist of irony?

The people cooking the poison that killed him had convinced him that he was no longer alone because they had rescued him when no one else would.

The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. That is the game plan he followed with Robert, and the story he seeks to write for all of us through all kinds of addictions. If our enemy can keep our focus on numbing the pain in our life, he keeps our focus off of living the life we were meant to live.

Life that gives hope, that looks forward to the future, that believes that change is possible.

So many of Robert’s years were marked by his struggle, but that struggle was not who he was. He was self-less to a fault, fun to be around, and he loved his kids. That’s the legacy I choose to remember.

At the same time, I can’t ignore his last months and days. They are filled with somber warning. They remind me that when I listen to the lies of the dark, when I give in to my own struggles and try to numb out, I am one decision away from stepping on the same path that stole him from us.