Brenna O'Connor

coach, sports enthusiast, pix-taking-mtn-biker, blessed beyond measure & here by the grace of God

[Brenna O'Connor @annerb25]

🤗💞😇 #godsgrace
https://t.co/RVDWq8rFp6

[Brenna O'Connor @annerb25]

#godsgrace

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

Mary Jo Copeland grew up in a home filled with violence, neglect, and silence.

Then she spent the rest of her life kneeling beside people everyone else ignored.

Born in Minnesota in 1942, Mary Jo spent her earliest years safely with her grandparents.

But when her parents took her back, everything changed.

Her father was abusive.
Her mother couldn’t protect her.
She went to school dirty, hungry, and ashamed.

Nobody stepped in.

No teacher.
No neighbor.
No adult willing to interrupt the suffering of a little girl who desperately needed kindness.

But instead of breaking, something inside her transformed.

She later said her Catholic faith became like “oxygen” to her.

And somewhere deep inside, she made a quiet promise:

One day, she would help people who hurt the way she did.

At 18, she married Dick Copeland.

Together they raised 12 children.

But the pain from her childhood never disappeared completely.

She battled depression.
Addiction.
Darkness.

And when she fought her way through it, she came out understanding something most people never do:

How invisible suffering feels.

In 1985, after years volunteering with Catholic Charities, Mary Jo and her husband opened a small storefront in Minneapolis called Sharing and Caring Hands.

No government funding.
No big institution behind it.

Just a woman who refused to look away from broken people.

She provided hot meals.
Showers.
Clothing.
Shelter.

But what people remembered most was this:

Mary Jo would drag a small wooden stool into the center, kneel down in front of homeless men and women, and wash their feet herself.

Every day.

Cracked feet.
Bleeding feet.
Frozen feet.

She washed them all.

Not for attention.
Not for cameras.

Because she believed dignity matters most when the world stops giving it to you.

Within a few years, Sharing and Caring Hands was feeding hundreds of people every single day.

Eventually she built Mary’s Place housing for homeless families with children.

Thousands of people found safety there.

In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded Mary Jo Copeland the Presidential Citizens Medal, one of the highest civilian honors in America.

The woman who barely finished high school.
Who never took a salary.
Who built everything through faith, volunteers, and stubborn compassion.

And maybe the most powerful part of her story is this:

The little girl nobody comforted…

Grew up to spend her entire life comforting others.

Sometimes the people who know suffering most deeply become the people most determined to ease it for everyone else.

[Brenna O'Connor @annerb25]

Good evening! My day was blessed and my heart is happy! 😉💞😇 #godsgrace

[SnoopyAndWoodie @Anklebiters0904]

🐾🌞 good morning

[Brenna O'Connor @annerb25]

Linus knows! 😉💞😇 #godsgrace

[🇺🇸Ben Owen™️🇺🇸 @hrkbenowen]

Amen, amen, amen!

[Brenna O'Connor @annerb25]

Amen. 🤗💞😇 #godsgrace

[Brenna O'Connor @annerb25]

Beautiful. I get it! May God continue to bless you! 🤗💞😇 #godsgrace

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

At seventy-nine, I live alone.

And for the first time in my life, I feel completely at peace.

When people hear that, I notice the look in their eyes. A softness. A kind of pity.

They ask gently:
“Don’t you get lonely?”
“Isn’t the silence hard?”

I always smile.

Because living alone is not the same as being lonely.

My name is Angela. I’m seventy-nine years old, and I live in the same apartment that once overflowed with noise — children running through the hallway, doors slamming, laughter from the kitchen, voices talking over one another at dinner.

I was a wife.
I was a mother.
I was the person who remembered everything.

Appointments.
Birthdays.
Groceries.
Medicines.
The small invisible tasks that quietly hold a family together.

I gave my life to the people I loved, and I do not regret it. But I also carried a tiredness I never spoke about.

Then my husband died.

After that, everyone worried about me.

“You shouldn’t live alone.”
“You need someone to take care of you.”
“You should stay with your children.”

I know those words came from love.

But hidden inside them was another idea:
that a woman my age could not possibly enjoy solitude.
That silence must mean sadness.

At first, even I wondered if something was wrong with me for liking the quiet.

Then one morning, standing by the window with a cup of coffee in my hands, watching strangers hurry through an ordinary gray morning, I realized something that changed me completely:

I had not been abandoned by life.

I had finally been returned to myself.

Now I wake when my body is ready.
I cook what I want.
I rest when I’m tired.
Some days I speak to no one at all — and yet I feel full, not empty.

I read.
I walk.
I watch old films.
I sit with my thoughts without rushing to escape them.

The silence no longer frightens me.

It comforts me.

My children have their own lives now, and that is exactly how it should be. I raised them to become independent adults, not lifelong caretakers of my happiness.

Of course I still feel nostalgia sometimes.
I miss certain voices.
Certain moments.
Certain versions of life that no longer exist.

But nostalgia is not the same thing as regret.

What I feel most now is peace.

The peace of no longer needing to prove anything.
The peace of having spent decades caring for others and finally learning how to care for myself.
The peace of understanding that solitude can be a gift instead of a punishment.

So when people still ask me,
“Angela… doesn’t the night scare you?”

I answer honestly:

No.

Silence is not my enemy.

It is my home.

And here, at last, I feel free.

[Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social @TrumpDailyPosts]

Wonderful news! White House Correspondent for Fox News, Peter Doocy and his wife Hillary Vaughn just announced they’re expecting their third child.

The best part?

Their new baby is due right on Peter's papa Steve Doocy’s birthday.

This will make it #3!

[Johnny Cadillac @lippyent]

Remember? Hmm 😒 🤔?¿

[Sharing @sharonePack]

Jesus knew exactly what we needed. Through the Holy Spirit,
#GodsPresence is with us every day.
you are never alone!

"But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don't, the Advocate won't come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you."
~John 16:7

[snoopy and friends @snoopyandfrien6]

MONDAY

[Misa @Misapd2019]

June Snoope 🌸

[ElsieAnna✝💜☮ @BarbaraRom20315]

Good Morning Friends!🌹
God Bless You!♥️

[SnoopyAndWoodie @Anklebiters0904]

Good morning 🌞☕️

[Sharing @sharonePack]

Greater is He that is in you
than he that is in the world.
#MoveInCloser

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 NOW: Rep. Tim Burchett asks President Trump to bring KID ROCK, JOHN RICH and LEE GREENWOOD to perform and host the America250 concert in DC — after artists bailed on it

"Get your friend and my friend John Rich, a great musician, to lead it off...let him emcee the dadgum thing and have all these folks come in."

"Then Kid Rock...the finale would be cool to have Lee Greenwood come out and sing."

"There's plenty of acts in Nashville, people that are trying to get on a big stage like this. This is the world stage, to be the largest stage in the world! Everybody in the country will be watching."

"Let some of those musicians get out and sing a few songs. All we'd have to do is pay for their dadgum airfare, most of them, just to get them up there and they'd love it."

"Have all those great stars up on stage. And anyway, if you all got any ideas of some groups from your area that would be willing to play, how about tagging them in this story and let's see if we can make this thing happen. So anyway, thank you all so much for sending me here. Thank you, Mr. President!" 🇺🇸

[Brenna O'Connor @annerb25]

To God be the glory! 🤗💞😇💦 #godsgrace

[CBN News @CBNNews]

A Jacksonville, Florida church reported a historic turnout after 2,552 people stepped into the Atlantic Ocean to be baptized as they publicly declared their faith in Jesus Christ.

The powerful moment is yet another sign of spiritual awakening in America as thousands are born again and baptized in event after event from coast to coast.

Read more: https://t.co/fVScDZv2kh

[Fox News @FoxNews]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! American film icon Clint Eastwood turns 96 today!

[Brenna O'Connor @annerb25]

🎶 "...no greater joy, than to be in this place, to lift my voice and sing His praise..."🎶🤗💞😇 #godsgrace

[Kelley White @kwhite791]

😇❤️🙏🏻

[Brenna O'Connor @annerb25]

So true. Amen. 🤗💞😇 #godsgrace