2025: The Year I Got Stabbed in the Foot
The lesson of 2025 was in the absence of reliable interpreters.
Prologue
The year of the great snow, a thing I had prayed for since I was five years old.
The year I sat in a rumbling theater watching the 20th-anniversary showing of Revenge of the Sith—this time beside my nephew, a film I first saw alone in 2005, when I was his age—listening to Obi-Wan deliver the saddest line in cinematic history: “You were the chosen one.”
It was a weird night, too. The kind of night that goes out of its way to taunt you when you’re just trying to enjoy yourself. Don’t ask me to explain because I can’t. I got Covid (again) the next day and was down for two weeks. I am not the chosen one.
2025, the year I got stabbed in my left foot on July 4th for going down a pontoon slide into shallow water. What got me? No idea. But the raw physics of entering the water feet-first, only to be stabbed in the top of my foot, still elude me. I’m also that rare kind of idiot who brings the first-aid kit on a pontoon boat and ends up being the only person who needs it.
The foot healed with a scar (hey, what’s one more?), but two months of inexplicable anxiety followed, which I didn’t talk about. Turns out I just needed Vitamin D.
The year I ate bad chicken and spent two weeks with food poisoning. I thought it was a kidney stone. And, as usual with my low tolerance for suffering, I thought I was going to die.
The year I chased vapor, hoping I might catch it.
The year, by God’s grace, I bought my family’s house back. Let no one boast except in Christ. That’s a story I’ll tell sometime, too. The story I want to tell—now that we’ve cleared the prologue—is about the year 2026.
But before we go, let’s make no mistake. The lesson of 2025 was in the absence of reliable interpreters.
Dreams
Ten years ago, I dreamed a mystery.
I stand on the deck behind my house—the one I just bought back—overlooking the water. But the water is also an aquarium, and swimming there, big and bold as anything, is a dolphin the size of a killer whale.
This dolphin lives to perform. She does tricks nonstop. Her glory, which she reflects heavenward, is in being the world’s biggest dolphin. In the dream, I call out to my mom, “You gotta see this.” But my mom says, “I’ve already seen it.”
Typical of dreams, I am teleported to the Arctic under a night sky, enclosed by two giant emperor penguins who tower over me.
One of the penguins instructs me in proper diving methodology while the other demonstrates. The whole time, I am reminded of my dad (I always say he dives off the blocks like a penguin). While the dolphin lived to be its genuine self, the emperor penguins live to master form, to excel at their craft, and to pass on their knowledge.
So far, we have two giant, larger-than-life swimming animals, one associated with my mother, the other with my father. Creativity and method. Fair enough.
But they always come in threes, don’t they?
The third scene teleports me to a pitch-black, six-by-six enclosure, the darkness rising infinitely above me. The only thing separating me from the void below is the cold water in which I float. The third animal? A thumb-sized, alien-looking fish with spiky scales, dead eyes, and a lantern attached to its head.
“I fear you more than any spectre I have seen.”
The lantern is the only light to see by as the fish swims in circles around me. Deaf, dumb, and blind, this creature does not perform or speak.
As the truth of my dire surroundings settles, I know I have only one option. I must dive into the abyss, breath held, guided only by the lantern’s pale light. The alien fish will lead me down and down while I surrender to trust.
The dream ended there.
Predictions and resolutions
Happy New Year. Time to wake up.
In 2026, I have no idea what will happen. The economy may boom or collapse. The world may go to war or continue spinning rumors of war. Some prophets may prove true. Others, false.
But one thing I have determined, with a resolve that would make Willy Wonka on his psychedelic nightmare cruise look like a chump, is this: I cannot afford to take counsel from anyone who does not exhibit the same radical faith towards God that we see in the New Testament Church.
Period.
I’m talking about the same radical faith required to dive into an abyss and trust that 1) you know who you are, 2) you’ve trained well, and 3) God is with you, even if he makes himself seem alien and small.
If I’m wrong and the New Testament is a lie, then I defer to Pascal’s Wager. I choose Aslan even if Aslan never was. Any insight that strays from this center is an unwelcome guest in 2026. Call me closed-minded, if you want.
A voice calls to me from the wasteland, where nothing false survives.
I can be friends with plenty of people in 2026, mind you. In fact, I hope God gives me more friends next year. That’s a real prayer of mine, believe it or not. Miracles happen every day. But the way is narrow, and few there are who find it when it comes to giving me advice.
Everybody wants me to succeed (whatever that means). Nobody wants me to fly the Falcon into an asteroid field.
Never tell me the odds
Forgive me, but I no longer have room in my soul for calculating the odds.
Scott Galloway (a.k.a. C-3PO) says that—according to the data—I should be a radicalized substance abuser because I’m a man in my thirties and live alone. The odds of surviving your thirties without a romantic partner are approximately 3,720 to 1!1
In the immortal words of Han Solo, “Shut him up or shut him down.”
Scott is right—up to the point where he forgets to acknowledge the one, time-tested and dreaded solution to the problem of despair: the scandal of the cross. He’s great at identifying the issues, sure. Yet, I’m mildly persuaded that his proposed solutions suck. The vast majority of atheistic solutions do.2
Drink more alcohol socially? So I can drift deeper into contemplative silence? All it takes is one Old Fashioned for me to go “further up and further in” and forget I was ever at a party. Make more mistakes? All I’ve ever done socially and romantically is make mistakes, Scott. Small ones. All the little faux pas that get you “icked” out of the arena. It’s why I am where I am.
Still, he is right about one other thing. I have been radicalized.
Rejoice evermore
Radical faith does not guarantee a definition of success that the world can get behind. Sometimes it does, but more often it guarantees only the courage to face suffering, exile, or death with humility and boldness. If you’re lucky, you have a haunted night at the movies. Or you get stabbed in the foot as a reward for going outside. Tattoo Psalm 91 on your forehead and count it all joy.
Sometimes, it snows in Florida.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the field, bald Christian YouTubers in their forties are telling me the most meaningful and American thing I can be is a husband and a father. And if I’m not those things, well, it’s because I need to cut out the video games. (Never mind the great schism of men and women that began with the sexual revolution and maybe long before, going back to the Fall. But what do I know?)
Thanks for preaching the glorified pull-yourself-up-from-your-bootstraps self-help idolatry. Tell Job’s three advisors I said howdy-do when you see them.
“Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed?” (Job 4:7, NIV). Wow, let me think...maybe, all the f*$#ing time? Somebody tell Eliphaz the Temanite to go easy on the shrooms. Oh wait, God already did: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2).
No one is safe in 2026. Not you. Not me. For everyone who has, what they have can be taken away without explanation. And what they have lost can be returned to them—again, without explanation.
So, be thankful. Pray for divine protection and rejoice evermore.
I open at the close
In 2026, I cannot afford to entertain the obfuscation of God’s plans. I’d rather spend my time in prayer, with the source. And if He ain’t talking back, then silence will suffice. Or, the select counsel of a few highlighted individuals who wear radical faith like bronze shields on their backs.
Consider a message delivered to a man in jail about to be beheaded: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (Luke 7:22).
My hope is in Christ alone. And you cannot come to that kind of single-minded hope until everything else has failed you, when you have spent the better part of decades leaning on your own understanding only to realize, in one sweeping instant, that God alone wields the eucastrophe, the great reversal of fortunes.
Never tell Him the odds.
It’s technically 2 to 1 in favor of survival, but you get my drift.
I don’t have a beef with Scott Galloway. He’s a successful entrepreneur for a reason. I’ve just realized that I can no longer bombard my consciousness with facts that deepen my sense of spiritual desolation. Everyone should learn and manage their limits.