A lot has gone right this year. A lot has felt right too. That’s not been the norm for most of the preceding decade.

Before 2026, I usually knew what to ask God for: help me endure this, help me get through this, help me hold on. This year has required a different prayer.

Now my mind feels clearer. Work has gone tremendously well. Cases I have carried for a long time are resolving. My writing has opened unexpected doors. Actual friendships have appeared almost spontaneously. My family is doing well. Chelsea is grinding through residency. I feel physically strong.

Honestly, it has probably been the best year of my life since the accident.

And I love that. But I am starting to realize that getting through the bad years did not graduate me from temptation. It just changed the syllabus.

Recently, I was reading an old journal I had from 2018. I was 20 years old, over two years married, preparing to start law school. Chelsea and I had just bought our first house. A full-tuition scholarship had come through. I had work with Matt’s firm. Voice of TBI was growing. For a brief moment, a lot of things seemed to be going right. And this is what I wrote down: “I must keep praying that he only gives me what I need so that I do not ignore him by my riches or despise him by my poverty.” (cf. Prov. 30:8).

Apparently 20 year old me had already met 28-year-old me. Sometimes you write a sentence years before you understand why you need it. Time may feel strange, but it’s no stranger.

The very next day I called it possibly “the most incredible summer of my life.”

Somewhere in the middle of celebrating the house, the scholarship, the internship, the church, and everything else, I started wrestling with the strange idea that Christians do not only glorify God through suffering. We can glorify him through prosperity too. I wrote that God blesses through “trials and triumphs, riches and poverty, power and weakness,” and that we do not exclusively glorify him through suffering; we can also glorify him through prosperity.

Eight years later, I finally understand what 20 year-old me was getting at.

Suffering has an honesty to it. Pain announces itself. Depression does not usually masquerade as righteousness. When your brain is not working, your future looks uncertain, and you can barely hold yourself together, dependence is difficult to ignore.

Success is quieter.

Moses warned Israel about this before they entered the land they had spent years wanting. His warning was not merely about what they might do in the wilderness. It was about what might happen afterward—“when you have eaten and are full,” when they had built good houses, when silver and gold multiplied, and when “all that you have is multiplied” (Deut. 8:12–13).

Then comes the danger: “your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God” (v. 14).

Then comes the lie: “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth” (v. 17).

Yet the command is quite simple: “You shall remember the Lord your God” (v. 18). Not achieve more. Not give everything away. Remember.

Success can start making bad theology feel reasonable. A door opens, and I assume I was supposed to walk through it. People respond well, and I assume my motives must have been good. Something works, and I confuse effectiveness with wisdom. I get away with something, and I begin wondering whether it was really that serious. Confidence can become presumption without announcing the change. Money can make dependence feel theoretical. Being liked can make attention feel deserved. Intelligence can become a very effective tool for explaining away what I already wanted to do. Even a strong marriage can tempt me to think careful boundaries are for weaker marriages.

Success does not make sin disappear. Sometimes it simply gives sin better cover. Money, influence, competence, control, or simple distraction can delay consequences long enough for me to mistake their absence for innocence.

My twenty-year-old self apparently knew something about that too. In another entry I wrote, “I am always afraid of lurking pride. I take too much pride in this life.” Eight years later, I wish I could say the concern had become obsolete. It has not.

But I do not want that realization to make me suspicious of good things. There is no holiness in manufacturing misery. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17).

God gives good gifts for our joy and his glory. I want to laugh with friends, win cases, make money, watch Chelsea succeed, love my children, become stronger, write things people read, and walk through good doors when they open. The danger is not enjoyment. The danger is forgetfulness.

That’s the challenge for a successful season.

I spent several years thinking about whether I could remain myself after a brain injury took so many things away. It was an existential problem of subtraction. My memories changed. Abilities changed. Desires changed. Goals changed. And some of those changes felt permanent.

In 2026, I am beginning to see the inverse problem: what happens to my identity when things are added? More competence. More income. More opportunity. More attention. More influence. More confidence. Can I receive those things without slowly allowing them to tell me who I am?

The first decade after the accident forced me to learn dependence. This next decade may require something subtler: remembering my dependence when life no longer forces me to feel it.

It is difficult to imagine yourself sovereign while lying in a hospital bed. It becomes much easier when the work is good, the family is good, the body is strong, people are calling, and the doors keep opening.

Maybe I need to recover a prayer my twenty-year-old self understood before I fully understood why I would need it. It sounded like this:

Lord, do not let me despise you when I lack, and do not let me forget you when I am full.

***

The past has taught me a great deal about suffering.

Now I must learn how to face success.