Prayables | 🙏No More War

Published: Wed, 03/18/26

Updated: Wed, 03/18/26

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

Take three seconds before you speak. Three seconds before you react. Three seconds before you press send.
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Let wars end, for the houses must cradle sleep, not sorrow, and the morning must bring work, not warning. Let gentleness be the measure of strength, since the only victory that lasts is the victory when no one is defeated.

Thank you to Infinite Prayers, an inspiration and a unique way to pray for peace. Check it out.

Oh, that we might know the Lord! He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring. Hosea 6:3

For these few minutes, may you be blessed to silence your thoughts and hear God's voice.

NOT MY CIRCUS, NOT MY MONKEYS

I am allergic to platitudes. But as someone who longs to save the people I love, I’ve found peace in a hokey cliché.

A friend’s father recently binged on vodka, and a neighbor found him wandering disoriented around his yard and took him to the hospital. My friend, who had been through this before, agonized over exactly what to say to convince him that he needs to stop drinking.

While he was in the hospital, she rifled through his house and threw out all of the liquor bottles, including the ones she found hidden in his drawers. She couldn’t resist the fantasy that something she could do or say would stop her father from destroying himself.

I know how this fantasy wears you down over time. I’ve lived with addicts at various points. I grew up watching my mother try to solve my sister’s addiction and related problems, until finally in her 80s she came to peace with the fact that saving or changing my sister was out of her control.

Over the years, a ridiculous hokey phrase has helped me: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” It is an old Polish saying that has been repurposed in the rooms of recovery programs for families and people close to addicts. When I first heard it, I thought: eyeroll.

But the phrase’s playful tone masks its seriousness and complexity. The idea is to recognize the limits of your own power. To give up your instinct to try to control or monitor or manage everything. As a friend put it to me, pretend the phone rings at a giant corporation you are working for and you say...CONTINUE READING

We're sharing the full article with a gift link from the Wall Street Journal

YOU DIDN'T MISS ANYTHING YESTERDAY.

Dear Prayables Family,

I continue to be grateful for your support of our community, through your opens and shares, through the emails you send me with a kind word, (or a correction) and sometimes simply because you have something to say.

For the next month or so, I'm moving to a three day a week schedule. You'll receive the Daily Prayables on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

There will be no Weekly Prayables edition.

I will be spending the extra time exploring new ways to get our message of positive prayer out more efficiently to more people in different ways.

Blessings, Susan Diamond, Prayables Chief-of-Prayer

1051 Perimeter Drive
9th floor
Schaumburg IL 60173
USA

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