Dear Lord, please, heal us of this situation. Keep us together. Grant us many, many years together as a beautiful, loving, holy family. Thank you for these trials and how they help us grow closer to you. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. Please. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2025
It feels more possible now, while still feeling utterly terrifying. Today was very difficult in many ways. I had anticipated finding relief from today, yet found higher stress and anxiety.
Perhaps God is cleansing us of something necessary to release.
Lord, I trust in you – I believe. Help my unbelief, please! Guide us clearly in this. Make us well and keep us safe and together, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2025
Please, be kind and be smart. You never know how much you can affect other people’s lives, be it for the good or for the bad… so, choose to do it for the good in their lives. Please.
God, guide us clearly, please. Direct our tongues with ease. Heal this situation and make us all a better family from it. Keep us together and well and safe, please. Please. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2025
Growing up, I saw these signs all around town due to the constant road construction one can find in the greater Houston area. I asked about what they meant. They read “GIVE US A BRAKE” and have a silhouette character of a construction worker. I was told that they are to let people know there are people working up ahead, so to be careful and slow down to keep them safe.
I struggled with this explanation, because I had thought originally that it was something like, though I didn’t know the word at the time, a protest by the workers. They didn’t like having to work so much under such conditions. They wanted a rest from their work, but especially from the unfair and unsafe expectations of drivers who honked and fussed all the time at them. However, the two ideas came together when I understood that, by having cars slow down, the workers were getting their safer environment, their better working conditions.
In seventh grade, I did a science fair project with a classmate where we talked about water surface tension and how soap affected it. All throughout the text on our tri-fold display board, we had the word “brake”, used in phrases like, “brake the surface of the water”. Our teacher called us over to look at the display with him. He began asking us questions to help us see an error we had committed. It didn’t make sense to me, what he was leading us to see. I understood that we had used the word “brake”. I did not understand why the word was not right, however. It was in that conversation that I discovered consciously – yes, for the first time – that there were two different words, homonyms: brake and break. I was utterly embarrassed at our poster board at that point, as it was covered in the wrong word. Yes, I had seen and used both versions of the word plenty in my life. But it had never occurred to me that the homonyms aspect existed.
I do believe that it was around this time that, upon seeing one of the road construction signs, their message finally made true sense to me(!): They were a play on words.
I think no one had ever mentioned that part to me. So, though I had definitely read and used the word “break” plenty of times, having the phrase “Give us a brake,” ingrained in my mind won out during the writing of the text for our science fair project.
So, that sucked.
I see the signs today, and it feels almost like they taunt me. They even seem a bit mean, though, as I believe they’re actually written “Give us a BRAKE”, or something similar to where only the last word is in all caps. What’s wrong with, “Slow down – workers present”? Nothing. But these signs really got to me on their lack of inclusivity. What do foreigners visiting do to understand the play on words? Though, they probably wouldn’t understand the idiomatic expression I’d always understood in the first place, so it wouldn’t matter. Even still, it both feels clever – I love plays on words – and feels mean.
Okay, that’s all for tonight. Still have the terror. God, heal us from this terror, please. Grant us success is resolving the whole situation well and with ease. Guide us clearly and always. Help us to be the best we can be, together, as a family with our daughter. Please. Keeps us safe and well. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2025
God, help us, please. In your name, we pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2025
I went to someone else’s house today. The family earns a lot of money, as I understand it. I learned a lot more about them as people after seeing their home today. I am grateful for the visit for many reasons. I told my mom afterward that she would have been proud of me for being chill in the environment and for not panicking. She understood completely and expressed clearly that she was proud of me, though she hadn’t been there. She understood.
Thank you, God, for showing me that I am more successful than I thought at managing our home. Thank you for my mom. Thank you for giving me the drive always to improve and to better myself. Help me continue to better myself each day, and help me to support those in my life to do the same. Thank you for this life and for this love coming from all around me. Thank you for our home. Guide us clearly in our next steps, please. Keep my daughter and my husband and me safe, please, and make us well. Keep all my loved ones safe, please, and make them well. Grant my grandma your love and will, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2025
I always like being helpful. I no longer feel a need to be helpful, as I did for a long time in my life. I genuinely enjoy being helpful. There is a freedom and lightness in it that rarely was present before. Ever since I got clear on a few things, it has become a true delight for me in life, being helpful. Mostly, I love sharing with others, teaching them. It hardly matters the subject matter – if I can teach someone something about something, I tend to love doing it.
And I find that really cool.
It also can be exhausting at times, though, because I get so excited about sharing this and that, and oh, I can share that, too… There’s a lot to know in this world. So, there’s a lot to be shared and taught. I can’t and won’t share everything I know, but my brain sure sometimes does its best to do so(!). Haha
Post-a-day 2025
Today, I’d scheduled my husband to go with me to the dentist, so he could manage the baby while I had my appointment. When it was coming time to get ready to leave, however, I offered for him just to stay home with her and see how it would go. He’d been somewhat successful with a bottle in the times we’d been practicing.
He readily agreed, and chose to run errands with her in tow.
At my appointment, I had a few moments of panic in which I’d thought I’d forgotten the baby in the car. But then my brain and body just embraced the lightness of not having to keep tabs on anyone else for the time being.
It was a freedom of independence I had not experienced in over a year, since before I got pregnant the first time. Actually, not true. I did feel it for those few weeks between the two pregnancies, after my body had recovered. Otherwise, though, it had been over a year.
Driving home, I had to call my mom to express my experience to someone who might get it. It felt amazing. Is this how my husband feels every time he goes somewhere?! I found myself thinking in mild outrage. It’s this easy for him to do things?!
I’d gone back inside to use the bathroom after leaving the office, and then got back in the car and headed out. That task alone would have been a slightly stressful one. I considered an errand on the way home, and the heaviness that has been present lately at the prospect of any stops on my own was completely absent – the idea created a light and free feeling in me. I almost felt wasteful for not making a stop somewhere that normally is difficult nowadays.
But I instead went home and sorted out the gym a bit and did some exercise. It was my first workout in almost a year. 11 months, I guess. May had my last workouts, I do believe… so wild.
Anyway, the workout felt great. It tired me just enough. I’d intended to do one more round of the movements, but they had gotten home and the baby was crying of hunger, and I had truly done enough for today, anyway. I didn’t need to push it quite that much.
I discovered that they had had a delightful time together, with her cooing and smiling for all sorts of photos and videos for my husband while he took her to Costco, Lowe’s, and Home Depot. Yes, we now have multiple photos of her in a Home Depot bucket. My husband even purchased her in a small bucket for only $2.98. Such a bargain compared to what we paid originally! 😛
Anyway, I passed out on the mattress in the living room after I fed her, I was so tired and sleepy. My husband made me dinner, but I didn’t eat it for a couple hours, as I was sleeping so necessarily. Now, I’m finally going to bed quite late, and am still very tired and sleepy. But in a good way tonight. I’m not going to bed worn down this time. I’m going to bed worn out. And that is a very important difference.
Thank you, God. Make us well and keep us safe, please, my husband and my daughter especially. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2025
Of course, when I went to go to bed early and my husband wants to go to the gym, the baby won’t sleep. She always sleeps at this time of night. Except tonight, when we aim to be better. Yikes.
Lord, help us to be well and to be loving, please. Keep us safe and together. Thank you for our home. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2025
“I won’t know it(!).”
“Great. I’ll be sure to flick you in the nipple when you wake me up…”
“What-ever(!).”
Our conversation just now as my husband slowly fell into bed with his very sunburned back causing him pain. I’d told him to let me spray it before he got into bed, because it otherwise would hurt him lying on it all night. Ache are his response and mine and his. Yes, we are ridiculous. Indeed, we have never claimed otherwise. 😛
Thank you, God, for our fun. Heal us, please, make us well, and keep us safe. Thank you for our home and our health and our family. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2025
hannah ananas 