Commit - a reflection on 2024

Every year, my wife and I each prayerfully choose a word of the year. Her word for 2024 was “blessed” and mine was “commit”. These aren’t necessarily words that we choose, but rather in prayer and contemplation come to mind and stick.

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2024 was a year of blessing. Our son Bennett’s name means “blessed”. Being parents is one of the sweetest gifts God could’ve given us. He’s walking, babbling, and almost always wearing a smile.

We’ve seen some transition this year. In Q3 of 2024, I began to work for Techless to help create a healthy smartphone called the Wisephone II. By God’s grace and a ton of hard work, the phone is now in the hands of thousands of people.

faith.tools began in March '24 and took off almost immediately. It’s sweet to have created a place to discover and distribute apps to equip Christians around the world to better love God, love others, and love self.

Unexpectedly, Freedom Stack took off. At the time of writing this, there’s 100+ stars on GitHub. Freedom Stack aims to be a full-stack starter kit that’s akin to Laravel or Ruby on Rails but with a focus on JavaScript and web primitives. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s a fun project to help others create projects faster!

I met some incredible people along the way who love Jesus and love technology.

We traveled, sometimes for work and other times family trips. Got to meet the CEO’s of Humane and hang out with them. Random, but really fun time.

And, we’ve had many hardships in 2024. Norovirus (with ER visit), kidney stone (with ER visit), having to move out of our house due to mold, many chronic health flareups, a death in the family, and draining all of our savings to pay for mold remediation and other house issues.

Yet, God is good.

God has put a word on my mind and heart a few times and it come to pass: not selling faith.tools and that he’d provide a way for me to go to Missional Labs. And, God came through. Our son Bennett is growing and is a very healthy, happy boy. Hannah’s doing well at work and loves what she does every single day.

I’m intrigued about 2025.

I feel a tug to learn. To foster a sense of curiosity and to learn. I’ve naturally loved teaching and sharing things I’m learning. While I don’t think that will stop, learning needs to take priority. I know what I know and don’t know what I don’t know.

I feel another tug to slow down. Urgency is a powerhouse in the right context and a wildfire in the wrong one. Hurry and mindlessness make it nearly impossible to hear the Lord speak and to see and love the people right in front of you.

I feel a third tug to keep my head up. God knows I can get ahead of myself. I can get super excited about something and neglect everything else. I can run, run, run until I can’t. Then, I get discouraged. I am reminded that “He who began a good work in you will continue that good work until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6).”

So… what was the “commit” word about?

Not fully sure. In my mind and heart I believe it was to commit to God’s leading and follow one step at a time, one day at a time.