Updates for the New Year

And an explanation for the silence these past three months.

To all my readers and subscribers, thank you for your patience and forbearance with the lack of content over the past several months. It’s been more than three months since my last post on September 20th. In that post I made public the new website I created with additional content and resources that I hope will be helpful to readers. In that same post I also discussed several articles I was working on in addition to a new publishing schedule I planned to release at the end of September. These articles have yet to be published, and the new schedule was never released.

Why the Silence?

The past few months have been a whirlwind. In addition to my normal responsibilities as a husband, father, professor, and pastor, I’ve been responsible for coordinating the care for my great aunt who was was recently transferred to a long-term care facility. I won’t elaborate on the details, but for readers unfamiliar with the American insurance system and the ins and outs of Medicaid and long-term care expenses, the time involved in obtaining coverage for long-term care is significant. Several other pressing matters also interfered with my plans to publish more regularly and to complete some of the longer pieces I had been working on. For those who have taken the time to read my writings over the past two years and who have shared my posts (and who have even supported me financially), please know that I am incredibly grateful for each of you and that I would not have been able to publish what I have without your support and encouragement.

What’s Next?

While I would love to go ahead and release what I hoped would be the more regular publishing schedule, my writing on this stack will likely still be very limited for several more months. I hope to have all the documentation finalized to complete the Medicaid application process for my aunt within a few weeks, but this spring semester will likely require more time than usual due to ongoing curriculum revisions and corresponding adjustments to my courses. Finally, my daughters will only be kids once (and that for not much longer), so I want to prioritize my remaining time during this busy semester to love and care for them (and to spend time with my wonderful wife and the rest of my family). It’s possible I may find time to release some short articles this spring, but my current goal is to return to this stack more regularly in mid-May following the end of the current semester.

If the Lord Wills

I’ve made lots of plans over the past few months (and years!), including plans for this stack. But as I think we can all acknowledge, sometimes our plans do not pan out like we would hope, and often we are unable to accomplish what we set out to do. I’ve been through several periods in my life where I have made promises or commitments that I have ultimately been unable to keep. This is the reality of being human—of being finite and limited in our abilities to know the future and to accomplish all we would like in any given day, week, or month. I should have acknowledged these limitations in my last post in September, remembering the words of James:

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

I have a tendency to think I should accomplish more than I do—that I should be able to write more frequently in this busy season and still be a faithful husband, father, professor, pastor, and friend. But the reality is that I am human—I am not God. I’m imperfect, I’m fallible, and I need sleep (even though in my pride I sometimes think I don’t). Because of these realities and the busyness of this current season, wisdom dictates that I not overcommit to publishing more than I’m able. But—Lord-willing—I hope to begin writing more in mid-May. Until then, know that I am truly grateful for everyone who reads this stack and that I look forward to interacting with you more soon.

For liberty and truth,

Josh