What I’m Loving Lately – Summer 2026

I hope everyone is enjoying the summer! I was just standing in my driveway talking with a neighbor and friend about her busy summer travel schedule, while I’m enjoying not traveling as much as usual. Although Jeff and I are spending these months on a lot of content creation—including creating the church small-group material for Habits of Hope, the next book!—the tempo of work is much slower.

And I’m loving that!

So, in honor of “loving” the slower summer schedule, here’s my semi-annual edition of “What I’m Loving Lately” with five fun things.  I hope you’ll find some of them as delightful as I do!

#1: My mom’s latest song—a toe-tapping, happy tune that is one of my absolute favorites!

As some of you have heard before, my mom has been a composer her whole adult life. When I was a kid, she would be driving me and my brother along the road to the grocery or a friend’s house, get this distant look on her face, pull over into a parking lot, and say, “I need a pen…!” And these beautiful compositions would just “come in.”

Well, the latest song to just “come in” is “I thank you, Lord,” and is one of my all-time favorites of hers. It is so joyful! It makes a great song for the choir – or a children’s choir for summer camp! (If you want the free sheet music, just contact her, Judy Reidinger, through her website at judysongs.com and she will send you a PDF.) Enjoy!!

Spotify link:

#2: Grandpa for the win!

I watched this sweet video, and it warmed my heart so much –and I also could not stop laughing! It is awesome to see these little toddlers who swerved around their expectant grandmothers and went racing to their grandfathers. No offense, ladies, but we get lots of affirmation and opportunities with children. It’s awesome to see grandfathers get the win sometimes. As one man put it when he saw this, “That does my heart good. To see that the little ones want us, too!”

#3: How European World Cup fans loved American experiences

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is coming down to the wire, and I want to commemorate my favorite part of the experience. Not the games, although many have been incredible. Not the U.S. advancing as far as it did into the tournament, although “Take me home, country roads” is now appearing in my dreams. Instead, my very, very favorite part of this was watching European fans in the U.S. lose their minds over Buc-ee’s, American fast food, hamburgers and fries, ranch dip, and free refills. Here’s just one fun article for all the American World Cup fans out there … or just the fans of America

#4: This incredible wisdom about kindness

I absolutely loved this perspective and found it incredibly convicting. “Kindness at home is the real test…. If all of your graciousness is saved for strangers, that’s not kindness. That is image management.”

#5: Homemade Tonkatsu Ramen

I love Asian food. I’m honestly not sure I had much choice in the matter, given how Asia-oriented our family is. I have a name from India and lived there when I was young. My parents lived in Beijing and my brother has lived in Singapore his whole adult life. And I worked primarily with Japanese banks on Wall Street. So yeah: I’m a fan of all sorts of Asian cuisine.

The thing is: One of my favorite Japanese dishes is Tonkatsu (pork) Ramen, but it has always been a luxury I can only get at a Japanese or Ramen restaurant. It is quite impossible to make from scratch because a) I’m not an experienced cook like Jeff is and b) the distinctive creaminess of the broth comes from boiling the pork bones for something like 18 hours. Sorry, that’s not happening! And even the large Asian markets in Atlanta (at least the ones I searched) don’t have the broth to buy.

How hilarious that my problem was solved by Amazon! There’s a yummy Tonkotsu ramen broth concentrate available online. You just cook either fresh or packaged dry ramen and put it in bowls, then boil the Tonkotsu concentrate with water and drop in some hot-pot thin-sliced frozen pork to cook for 60 seconds, pour over the ramen, then top with some chopped green onions, mushrooms, and/or a half of a soft-boiled egg. That’s it! It creates about 90% of the restaurant Tonkotsu experience—and in a way that even I can cook it. And the whole thing literally takes 10-15 minutes. An easy and yummy dish for a busy family.

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