Tag: self-expression

A few days’ time

Whenever I want to do something that 1)will take extra effort, 2)requires extra time, and/or 3)is a shift in or from routine, it usually takes me a few days’ time to process the idea. First, I hit the point of knowing that I really would like for it to happen – not just that it would be nice, but that I truly want the resulting shift or change or whatever. Then, I just kind of sit on that idea for a bit, let it simmer, let it develop naturally, rather passively, without putting intentional effort into it. After a few days, I have causally developed a plan. I start doing little steps that assist with the impending shift. Eventually, I determine that I’m almost certain that I want to do it a certain way or time or whatever. And then, somewhat suddenly, though usually within 24 hours or so, I dive right into it and make it happen.

And then it’s done, like it was no big deal and was always going to happen on this day and at this time, and now my life has shifted in some subtle or huge way.

No matter what it is, be it rearranging furniture, unpacking boxes, getting rid of things, shaving my legs, or putting up a shower curtain, it almost always takes the same few days’ processing time before I make it actually happen. Tonight, it was the shower curtain.

And it looks great.

And it feels silly that it took me days to put up a shower curtain, once I’d determined that I was pretty sure I’d wanted to put it up.

But it did. And it almost always does. And it was perfect that it was tonight, and I am grateful that I got it done at a time when it didn’t cause extreme stress, as it would have done had I done it at any time beforehand when it had come to mind. Instead, it got to sit in the background and ruminate, and I was able to arrange time and effort for it to happen with ease, rather than total stress. Tonight, I fit it into the schedule without having to sacrifice sleep or any other already-scheduled task. For that to happen, it always takes a bit of time to get everything to shift just right. And, tonight, it did,

Thank you, God, for the ease of tonight’s shifting task. Thank you for giving me these opportunities to make positive changes in my life without having to stress immensely over them. Thank you for the ease it allows just to let things sit for a bit before taking action. Please, help me always to see clearly my next step in pursuing and fulfilling your will in my life. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Faith

Sometimes, I have trouble having faith that all will work out perfectly, that God will take care of us, that things are going as they are right now for a very good and valuable reason in my life and in the lives of those I love.

And yet, as someone mentioned tonight, whenever we have no faith at all, everything just feels even worse… we have no hope, no true love embedded naturally in life, no trust that we will be taken care of in the end, even if we feel we have failed to do our part.

And so, even though it sucks when I struggle to trust in God, it sucks even more when I give up on Him entirely… so, I’ll take my struggling faith over no faith any day.

Dear God, I am sorry that I have doubt toward you and your plans. I am sorry that I give in to the temptations of the devil and his workers. And I accept that I will continue to do both for the rest of my life. Please, help me to grow in my strength to resist the bad and to uphold the good. Help me to grow always in my trust in you and your works. Help me always to pursue and to fulfill your will. Your son, Jesus Christ, suffered in our stead and died in sacrifice for our sins such as I have mentioned. In his name, I pray in gratitude and faith. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Just be

Tonight, instead of going straight to bed, I watched a terrible show with great dancing and waited for my man to finish exercising. After I shower in the evening, I don’t like touching anything dirty, so I purposely waited so that I could hug him when he arrived.

What was really awesome, though, was that he sat down with me to watch this terrible show with good dancing, and we just got to lie there together, half snuggling, half just lying on top of each other. It was lovely just being physically against one another, especially after having been apart for so long.

Thank you, God, for this man and his love. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

My man

My man is home, and I am beyond grateful. I am relieved, excited, delighted, and filled with joy. And yet it also feels completely normal. I am not bouncing off the ceiling or anything. But, when he first hugged me, held me, I just started to cry – not only was it that my man was home, but also that I have a man who loves me and whom I love… as he said to me this morning when we were just sitting together as he held me, he loves me “immensely”. And I him.

And I am so grateful for it.

Thank you, God, for this man and this love that we have been blessed to share with and through you. Help us always to honor you with our relationship, and thereby honor one another always. Help us to be the best we can be and to pursue and fulfill your will. Thank you for the many blessings we have and share. Thank you for your love. Help me gently, please, to release my fears and to trust in you. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Homecoming

Tomorrow is the homecoming football game. I’m not going. Not even for a few minutes. And, for the first time, I’m excited about that fact.

I normally love the homecoming game. The buzz is exciting already, but I also really enjoy all the silly and utterly stupid mums that kids are wearing nowadays. I aim not so much to consider the cost of these things, though. Haha

Nonetheless, I normally like to go, at least for a little bit, and am sad if I cannot attend. This year, however, I am so darn tired, I can hardly wait to go home and go to bed tomorrow after school.

(Coincidentally, I just remembered that I’m signed up to go to the Pasadena rodeo with a friend and her family, though she did say this evening that we might not be going after all… so, we’ll see.)

Post-a-day 2023

The room was a buzz… with static

I went to adoration… for all of five minutes, and then I ditched. Why? I had to get out of there. Just as with every other time I have gone into that chapel, my ears were assaulted by the loud humm-buzz of what only could be a speaker not in use but on or terrible dimmable lights… as we discovered today, it was both.

I’ve been casually asking for years who is in charge of the technology of the place, but have always simply not received an answer. Today, however, when I couldn’t even stand to be in adoration, a place I wanted and love to be, I made it happen. I went to the offices and found someone who, though not officially in charge – turns out no one truly knows ‘who’s in charge’ there – had a key to all the locked doors and had authority to investigate the sound with me.

I explained to him my theory. When he had replaced the blessed sacrament back into the tabernacle, I got to troubleshooting. After only a few tries and one google search, I had my main solution: Yes, the amplifier hanging on the ceiling was left on all the time, thereby giving a constant feedback sound.

Displayed here:

After the massive sound was gone, we did find a much smaller one that ended up coming from – you guessed it – overhead dimmable lights.

Though the lights may or may not stay off (there are two sets side-by-side), I now know which ones make the buzz. As for the speaker, I wrote a note to say specifically what to turn on before each Mass and to turn it off after each Mass. Until that becomes normal for folks, I at least know how to turn it off myself. Just have to find someone with the right key… and yes, I have considered asking if I might have a copy of that key, specifically for the purpose of being able to silence the buzzing roar of the speaker when needed. We shall see what happens.

For now, though, we have a wonderful start and a functional real of possibility and plans. And I am grateful for that.

Thank you, God. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Prayer

Some nights, when I’m getting ready for bed, after I’ve already prayed the rosary with Mark Wahlberg, I listen to a chanting-sung version by a German-born, Ecuadorian-raised sibling-group called “Harpa Dei”. Their prayer-song-chant is called “Rosary of the Nations”. It is sung with what I call a Latin base, and accents in Hebrew, English, Spanish, German, and French, with each decade having a different focus language. It is lovely and it is calming. Every night I play it before bed, I go to bed calm and feeling easy and somewhat light. Perhaps it releases the yoke, somehow…

Whatever the case, it is lovely. I actually donated to have the real version of it – high quality audio for the win – instead of the YouTube one, but here is the YouTube one, in case you’d like to give it a listen. I love it and I love how it improves my life each night.

Thank you, God, for sharing these prayers and this version with me. Please, bless Harpa Dei for these gifts they share so wonderfully with the world. Thank you for the love. Please, heal my grandma and my brothers’ dad. Thank you for this life and all of its love and opportunity. In your name, I pray. Amen.

P.S. If you would like to learn more about the group and consider purchasing any of their albums, via donation, click here to see their website.

Post-a-day 2023

Knowing

An employee is suddenly not at work on a Monday. The office is cleared out. The employee’s information is wiped clean from the online directories and website pages. It is almost as if the employee never existed… though the employee was there on Friday…

Not a word is said about the sudden disappearance and near-erasure of this employee.

In such a situation, we have a tendency to want to find out – to want to know what happened. We want to speculate. We want to discuss.

On one hand, we want to make sure we don’t make the same mistake or mistakes that that employee must have made. On the other hand, we just want to know. We don’t actually need to know, and we have no real reason we can name for wanting to know other than, simply, wanting…

And this landed for me in a new way today, as I discussed this whole scenario with another:

Is that not the work of the devil? I asked, almost surprised to be saying it myself. That was the whole deal with Adam and Eve – he set up a sense of ‘needing to know’, which had them eat from the Tree of Knowledge. That was the spark and the downfall for Adam and Eve… and it has been handed down to us, that same need to know.

He and I both sat there silently for a few moments, letting the idea sink in.

“That’s… a really good point,” he said.

We both kind of chuckled as we processed further exactly how good a point it was. Clearly, it had struck a chord in us both, for more than just the present scenario.

I mentioned how I was now reconsidering whole chunks of my life with this new perspective, and it was all occurring very differently suddenly. After all, I have already admitted plenty that one of my biggest struggles in life is when I have an experience of not knowing… either about how something is done or what is expected of me, and especially about what is to come next for me in life as a whole. When I now consider these instances of not knowing from the perspective of ‘the devil is who’s telling me I need to know,’ suddenly, I have a place of freedom around them all. The overwhelming thought is that ‘I don’t actually need to know, do I? God will make sure I know what I need to know. And He likely won’t tell me what I don’t need to know. So, I genuinely DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ANYMORE ABOUT NOT KNOWING…’

About anything in life… I have no idea what actually will happen with my job in the next eight months. And, as I saw today, I truly do not need to know. That doesn’t mean I don’t prepare for different scenarios or prepare for success. It simply means that I don’t need to worry about the fact that I don’t know which scenario will be revealed. When it reveals itself will be the time for me to know and the time for me to respond. Until then, I can do my best where I am and head in the direction I feel called to go, to the best of my ability. I don’t know if I’ll make it that way, and that is totally okay. I’ll find out when I get there. If I don’t need to know, I likely won’t.

Perhaps life actually is on a need-to-know basis. Perhaps it is too heavy for any individual to carry, knowing everything… you know? My yoke is easy and my burden is light… because you don’t have to know everything I know. 😛

Goodness gracious… God is gracious, and God’s Grace is miraculous and wonderful.

Thank you for this blessing today, God. Thank you so much. And thank you for this love and this life. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Problems

Well, I got one thing resolved today at work, and so am grateful for the resolution. It made an immediate difference, and I was instantly relieved. I think a big part of the relief was that it all confirmed that the people who hired me had no idea the hassle and struggle I was having. As soon as I brought it to their attention this morning, the problem was almost instantly handled. So, it was a good feeling to know that the higher ups didn’t want me to have the hassle I was having and that they believed I was supposed to be treated as an actual teacher – which I am, despite my official status on the payroll – in this matter. I think that part relieved me almost more than the actual issues having been resolved…

Thank you, God, for that clear bit of care and love and of being wanted and appreciated and valued. Thank you. Please, heal those in need of healing. Help me to be a spectacular teacher and to support my family well. Keep my man safe, please. Thank you for him and his love. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023