10/12/2026
"When Bad Days Go Good."
Saturday started poorly. And then it got worse.
My wife works at our local children’s hospital as a neonatal intensive care nurse and almost always works one of her 12-hour shifts on Saturdays. Since she leaves the house by 6 am and doesn’t return until after 8 pm, I have the distinct privilege of wrangling our four children on my own. Saturday, I got to be soccer dad.
Yes, we leave in the suburbs and yes, two of the kids play soccer and yes, I drive a mini-van.
This week it was our turn to provide the team snack. Back when I was a kid, this usually meant buying a bag of oranges and slicing them into quarters. Now, the custom is to provide at least one pre-packaged nut-free snack and a beverage.
At our local grocery store, with the brood in tow, I manage to grab a box of Scooby-Snacks and Rice Krispy treats without incident. It is during the negotiations over the beverage selection when things started to go south. I reflexively grab a little case of Capri-Suns. My eight-year-old daughter, however, is convincing my son, whose team will receive said drinks, that the Little Hug Fruit Barrels are a better option.
As a parent, I know the Capri-Sun pouch is trustworthy and nearly spill-free and that anything that comes in a barrel is not. My five-year old son disagrees. Bedlam ensues in the fruit drink aisle.
Herding a screaming child towards the checkout lane is never fun, because Murphy’s Law of Parenting indicates that the more dramatic the scene your child creates, the more crowded the store will be with people to witness the spectacle. Afterward, the two-minute drive home is accompanied by a sure and steady increase in the screaming decibel level. Upon exiting the vehicle in our driveway, he threatens (loudly enough for the whole block to hear) to run back to the store on foot to correct my error. I es**rt him to his room for a Time Out. In a tantrum, he slams his door into his wall, leaving a doorknob-sized holed in the drywall.
Cue my tantrum.
Eventually we get to his game, which is called after 30 minutes of play due to frigid temperatures and rain. When we finally get home, I get out of the car to place my keys and phone on a storage shelf while I hang their soaking jackets up to dry. While I’m getting children and personal affects out of the car, I hear a crack. I turn to find my new iPhone screen side down on the garage’s concrete floor. Because I just got it on Tuesday and hadn’t found a case I liked just yet, the screen shattered on impact. I will find out later that the screen can’t be replaced because neither the new screens nor the device required to replace them have shipped to the Apple stores. (Apparently they didn’t anticipate that their early adopters would be so clumsy.)
At this point, I text my wife that this is, in fact: “The worst day ever.” (Unbeknownst to me, she is having a trying day of her own.)
Later that afternoon, after the babysitter arrives, I drive an hour away to officiate a wedding.
The couple, Stephen and Gretchen, elected to incorporate a musical element into their ceremony I hadn’t seen before: a gospel choir. The choir surprises their guests by walking down the aisle and serenading our glowing couple with the Beatles’ classic “All You Need Is Love.” When the ceremony is over, they sing again, this time “O Happy Day” as the guests file out of the chapel.
Not matter how bad a day has gone, it turns out that it’s nearly impossible to scowl when you’re standing next to a gospel choir singing this particular song.
“O Happy Day,” they sing.
“Is it really?” I wonder.
“O Happy Day,” they sing again.
“I’ve had better,” I think.
They sing: “When Jesus washed, when Jesus washed, when Jesus washed . . . He washed my sins away.”
On hearing this line, I have no internal snarky comeback. That refrain haunts me all the way back to my car and for a good portion of the long ride home.
In this moment, I had the distinct sense God was trying to offer me some much-needed perspective in day marked by yelling, parental struggles, drywall holes, and cracked iPhones. If forgiveness for all my crimes (in thought and word and deed) against God, myself and others, is available in the person of Christ, then it’s a happy day indeed. If Jesus’ sacrifice on my behalf allows for the washing away of guilt and shame in all its various manifestations, there’s still cause for joy. And when I allow mundane setbacks to eclipse the gratitude that can and should accompany the beauty of this truth, I willfully forfeit a version of happy.
No, it wasn’t a great day. In fact, there were other curveballs I had to navigate between the end of the wedding and the end of the day, but when I function in the grace that allows me to zoom out and see the larger redemptive drama unfolding in and around my life, I’m better equipped to stomach the setbacks.
Here’s hoping I can embrace the perspective I need to see more bad days turn good. And maybe next time I won’t need a gospel choir to get me there.
(This one is from the archives: 2014).
