A Bingo Card Filled with Beginnings
A Monthly ZOOM with the Boys
When I made my 2026 Bingo Board, I tried to choose squares that were a mix of practical, playful, and quietly important. Most of them felt normal, a few felt ambitious, and one or two felt slightly ridiculous. And then there was this one: Monthly Video Call with the Boys.
Not climb a mountain. Not write a book. Not even run a marathon. Just call your sons once a month. It sounds so simple that it almost feels embarrassing to put on a life goals board, and yet here we are.
If you had told me years ago that one day I would need to schedule time to talk with my kids, I would have laughed. There was a season when silence in our house meant something had gone terribly wrong. Back then, connection was automatic and constant and frequently sticky. We had bedtime stories and car rides and baseball games and the nightly performance of “Dad, watch this,” followed by something that absolutely required watching immediately. Togetherness wasn’t something we planned. It was simply the background music of daily life.
Now they are grown men with grown-up schedules, real responsibilities, and calendars that fill up faster than mine ever did at their age. Somewhere along the way, spontaneous togetherness quietly slipped out the back door without an announcement or farewell speech. It just left, and life kept moving.
So when I made my Bingo Board this year, I added the square: Monthly Video Call with the Boys.
Here is the honest part. We haven’t scheduled it yet. Not the first one, not the recurring calendar invitation that will make it real. At the moment, this square exists as a hopeful intention and a line of text sitting patiently inside a blue box. Which means this blog post might be the most public nudge in family history. Boys, if you are reading this, consider yourselves gently called out.
In the first Grace Bingo post, I wrote that you don’t conquer a square, you encounter it. Right now I am standing at the edge of this one the way you stand at the edge of a treadmill before pressing Start. I am not intimidated. I am simply aware that once the button gets pushed, something begins.
It would be easy to tell myself this is unnecessary. We talk. We text. We stay connected in the everyday ways families do. But there is a difference between catching up here and there and intentionally setting aside time when the three of us can simply be together in the same conversation, even if together now looks like three faces inside small glowing rectangles. I have a strong suspicion that this square is not really about technology at all. It is about intention. It is about choosing to show up on purpose. It is about making space on the calendar for something that already matters.
I can already imagine how the first call will probably go. Someone will be late. Someone will talk while muted. Someone will say, “Wait, can you hear me now?” at least twice. It will not be polished or cinematic, and no music will swell in the background. It will be wonderfully ordinary, which is exactly where grace has a habit of sneaking in.
This square is not finished. It has not even started. But the moment I put it on the board, something shifted. A small, quiet decision was made and a door cracked open. Sometimes grace shows up the moment we decide to make room for it, even if it arrives by ZOOM link.
Boys… your move.
Following the Squares
This is one square on the Grace Bingo board, and the year is still young. I am not trying to complete the board so much as pay attention to what happens inside the squares, including the starts, the delays, the surprises, and the moments that turn out to matter more than expected.
You do not need your own board to follow along. All you really need is a little curiosity about where the sacred might be hiding in your everyday life, because chances are you have already been standing on an Unlikely Altar.
And if this idea ever nudges you to sketch your own version of a Bingo Board, I would love to hear about it. You can email me here: martyvershel@gmail.com
