Tag: future

Guidance

Thank you, God, for the guidance I received for today. Please, help me to understand my guidance for tomorrow, too. In your name, I pray. Amen.

I woke up just after 4:30 this morning, used the bathroom quickly, and got back into bed, sleepy. But I couldn’t fall back asleep. By 5:30, I had determined to get on up. Shortly after that, I did a full workout, finishing around 6:30, and cooking and eating a bigger-than-usual breakfast around seven. And the day only went on well from there. Even the rainstorm felt beautiful today, somehow, despite the veritable pond that has developed in our backyard where the chickens are supposed to have free roaming.

Anyway, I got bitten horribly by mosquitos when I went outside this evening, but it was still a good day.

I even really started missing my man, in a way I really haven’t since woke first nights of knowing each other… but it was still a good day.

And now, I will go to bed and likely sleep very hard tonight, still missing him.

Thank you, God, for all this beauty and love in my life. We love you. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Dentist

I have an appointment in the morning at the dentist. I scheduled it online the other day, because they were already closed. You see, I have a side of a tooth that is acting an awful lot like a cavity. I mentioned that it hurt when the hygienist was cleaning it a few months ago, but she didn’t do anything about it, other than comment that it was clearly sensitive, so I figured it might just be okay. I thought it might have been another case of my guns going below the regular line on a tooth, and exposing a more sensitive area on the tooth. Now, however, I’m not so convinced.

To add to that, I noticed Friday that I had these little black spots on the top of one of my lower molars, and I started to freak a bit. Last year, the sealant on one of my upper molars had cracked, leaving black mildew(?) growing under the edge of the sealant. Since it was up top and not all the way in the back, no one had been able to see it, myself included. So, I had to go back three days later to get that fixed, and I freaked out meanwhile that I had mold or something in my mouth. It was stupidly terrifying. Now, I’m a touch worried it is another version of that. However, I’m also, in a lesser way, worries it is merely my charcoal-based toothpaste that is getting stuck in little ridges of the tooth, and it is really nothing to be worried about.

Whatever the case for both teeth, I am hoping that tomorrow morning will provide a clear answer and solution to the possible problems. I’m just hoping that they’ll do it then and there. I wrote why I was coming in in the booking, so I’m hoping they scheduled enough time for whatever needs to happen to happen tomorrow morning. If I have to hang out there all day just to get it all handled, I likely will. Hoping it doesn’t come to that, though.

Dear God, please, heal my mouth and its contents. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Found it

Today was another great day of getting done things I hadn’t done yet, despite having them on the list for more than a short amount of time. Tomorrow, I hope, I shall continue to do such things(!). And I’m actually quite excited about that. One of the things I did today was just to spend a few minutes to sort through e-mails and to delete or mark as read the ones I had missed over time or that had expired relevance. That dropped my unread e-mail count by over a third. That was a big deal in and of itself. Hopefully, I remember to do more for actually reading those daily inspiration e-mails that I’ve stocked up. Tomorrow could be a day filled with inspiration! ;P

Post-a-day 2023

Lacking a goal

Lacking a goal can be one of the toughest times. I found a great one to have today, and I accomplished much and was very grateful for the accomplishments. Tomorrow shall be another such day in which I must create a specific goal, for I presently have none, and it is already becoming difficult.

Sure, I have the long-term goals. But I am at a small get significant crossroads right now. Perhaps this is the perfect time for me to do the things I’ve been putting off. (Meaning that it definitely is the time for that! Haha)

God, help me, please, to be my best self and to pursue and fulfill your will. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Old crap

(Forgive the language, please a it just seemed quite appropriately used here.)

There’s a lot of junk that comes with getting old. I don’t merely mean old-er. I mean old. There are lots of little hassles and troubles involved with getting older, with aging as a whole. But getting old has a uniquely stressful aspect: As the body and mind age, they often tend to revert towards babyhood, and adults are not prepared to take care of a 90-year-old toddler who not only can make others believe he is competent and allowed to be out alone, but can get out alone the moment a back is turned or a corner is rounded.

At some point, when ZK was still on my childhood, I was talking with my dad about the idea of grown kids wiping their parents’ butts as the parents grew too old to do it themselves. I asked him if he expected us to wipe his butt one day. He, quite seriously, said he absolutely did not expect it. I was surprised. He said he expected us to hire someone else to do it. I was even more shocked. You wouldn’t want your own family to care for you? And his answer was a firm, confident, and clear, ‘No.’

I didn’t understand it back then, not really. He had said something about hatred or resentment, but it didn’t make sense to me. After seeing the struggle with someone in my own family lately, and now having to deal with it firsthand myself, I understand what my dad had meant. He didn’t want us to resent him int he final years of his life. He wanted us to be able to love him and be happy with him in those years. Yes, it is very loving to care physically for someone, but it isn’t always happy or easy doing that. There can be a massive buildup of very negative memories in that relationship right at the very end of the old person’s life, leaving the younger person grateful of the death and, necessarily, then feeling horrible for being relieved and glad for it.

It is hard dealing with an old, sick person. Getting almost no sleep in order to help with constant bathroom wake-ups throughout the night, cleaning up bodily filth that ended up all over clothes and the floor and almost none in the toilet, forcing down medicines or vitamins or healthy foods or water just to help heal an illness or relieve the pains, changing a diaper on a fully grown person who resists it, despite having just walked around half-naked in public and not knowing it… that and so much more is very hard to handle. What’s harder is handling it all and not, in some way, resenting the person for whom one is doing it all. It’s so hard not to take it personally, especially when that person yells at you for who knows what…

So, I get it. I wouldn’t want my kids to have their final memories of and with me be ones of near-constant frustration and anger and heartbreak. Having and unrelated person come in to take care of the old person goes much further than one might think, for all members of the family. I never would have thought that before doing it myself, seeing it happen myself, twice now. And I am all the more grateful for the people in this world who do choose to take up that role in society. Those caretakers make more than a little difference. They don’t just do the grunt work or the dirty work of the situation. They can truly heal the situation. They completely transform what likely would have happened without them, and all the relationships involved for the better.

Thank you, all you who take care of the old people for their families. You help more than you could know.

Thank you, God, for these people.

Post-a-day 2023

Returning

I’ve worked out normally again for the past three days, and it has been marvelous. I have been so sore that I moan and groan every time I go to sit on the toilet or bend over. My hamstrings in particular are shaking like they haven’t in a long, long time. It is much like when we first started working out – and that same friend is doing the sprite with me now – and it is amazing. We both are hurting in such a good way, and it feels oh-so-good to be back.

And it feels like I’m actually being myself again, which makes it all the better.

Thank you, God. And thank you, friend. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

So far, so right

I got an interview today. It was short and sweet and to the point, and I very much enjoyed it. It seems to have gone well. We shall see what comes next.

But I know things would have been different for me today with this interview if I hadn’t stood my ground yesterday (and, possibly, earlier this week).

Thank you, God, for helping me to trust in you. Please, continue to do so – continue to make it clear for me which way you are calling me in each moment. Help me to pursue you and your will as also my own. Help me to love and to be loved, with and through you always. Thank you for this life. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

P.S. I really would like to get this job, just so we’re all clear.

Pulled

God is calling me, encouraging me to take a stand, yet something, too – the devil, perhaps? – is pulling me to feel guilty at this desire to stand for myself, to stand my ground, to stick with what feels right, though it may seem selfish at a glance.

I cannot explain it any other way right now, but it feels like God is calling me to be here right now.

Ironically, I was just sharing Sunday how I’ve determined that I need to trust wholly whatever call I feel from God right now, as that will lead me to where I need to be. And now, mere days later, I am having to do just that in a very difficult way, and I almost didn’t stand up for it.

Post-a-day 2023

Not good enough yet

I will be good enough after more learning and experience, but I’m not good enough for the dream jobs yet.

And that’s okay. It makes perfect sense, given that I’m only just learning even how to do the basics for this new career direction I want to pursue. I feel no shame for it. A touch of sadness, perhaps, due to the need to have some patience as I learn and improve, but no wrongness about it, no, ‘I suck,’ about it all.

But for how many other parts of my life do I not allow myself to experience this same scenario in such a way? How many other places do I expect to be better than I am, further along than I am, even though I haven’t yet had the learning and experience within that ‘role’ in order to be a master of it, to be exactly who and how I want to be in that realm? How much strain and stress and shame am I giving myself, when I have no true reason to expect myself to be any better than I am at certain things in this very moment? Relationships with others, with self? Working out solo instead of in group classes? Cooking for two? CLEANING for two? And a dog? Laundry for two? (To be clear, I still suck quite badly at the full laundry process for myself, and have been working slowly on that in recent years. Yet I expect myself to be able to ah for it flawlessly for two people suddenly??) Supporting a house? Paying for life in a house? Supporting a family financially? Managing prayer life for a family? Figuring out things not on my own? Keeping a sleep schedule that is drastically different from someone else in the same house?

I was not a great teacher when I first started teaching. Yes, I was good, especially for a new teacher. I had great instincts and great ideas. I had very good relationships and rapport with students. But I wasn’t a great teacher. It took me a long time to turn a lesson idea into an actually good lesson, let alone great lesson. My overall subject-area effectiveness was somewhere just above the middle, possibly a bit higher. Sure, I encouraged and empowered students to pursue their lives fully. But they didn’t necessarily learn their subject all that well. Now, however, things that took forever or never happened come easily for me. It takes little effort to turn a crap lesson – IN THE MOMENT – into a great and effective And fun lesson (for not just be students, but also for me). I put just as much effort into teaching, but the results are monumentally greater, and in all ways. I love teaching, and I have become a great teacher. But I wasn’t always a great teacher. Just because I was good and I was good enough to become great didn’t make me great then. It only made me great now, down the road of experience and effort and desire – not merely the desire to be great.

That being said, perhaps I could chill a bit on being so harsh on myself and my life for not being better already. Sure, I may be great at much. But that doesn’t mean I have to be amazing at things I have almost no experience or practice actually doing. It’s okay to suck at those things. That’s the point of a neophyte. And I am the one (in my shoes). (And yes, I’m a total nerd and a bit of an idiot, too. Please, enjoy the terrible pun. 😛 )

Post-a-day 2023