Howdy! I'm Hannah Lang, and my husband Daniel and I live in Texas with our daughter. I spend my days balancing life as a new mom and serving as the children’s minister at our local church. We’ve been on the adventure of foster parenting and are excited to see how the Lord continues to write that piece of our family story. Daniel works for a missions agency, and we're both on a journey to put technology in its proper place as we seek to lead our family in loving God and others. As a family, we love playing sports, reading, eating Tex-Mex, traveling, and spending quality time with our family and friends.

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Do you have a moment when you realized your phone was getting in the way of what’s important to you?

In 2023, we became parents twice over. First with our foster daughter, and then with our biological daughter born later in the year. We'd both been trying to spend less time on our phones and had experienced fits and starts of effectiveness, but it was when we welcomed these two girls that it became even more important to put screens in their proper place. My hope is that my kids would see me looking into their eyes with love vastly more than they see me looking at a screen.

What attracted you to Aro?

My older brother and his family received an Aro box for Christmas two years ago. While I liked the concept, my honest first reaction was, "That seems excessive (and expensive), why not just use a shoebox?" As the year went by and I was on my own journey for more intentional time and less mindless scrolling, I wasn't as successful as I wanted to be...and I never put my phone in a shoebox. This past Christmas, I decided to ask for Aro, and it has already made a noticeable difference in these several months! I am competitive and easily motivated by positive reinforcement, so the gamification of screen-free time has been super effective. And it certainly helps that Aro is much prettier than a shoebox.

What is the greatest piece of advice you have ever received?

I've heard this from different people in slightly different ways, but I love the idea of orienting your life and your future not around what you want to do, but who you want to be. What do you want to be true of you when you're 50, 80, 100? What do you want people to say about you at your funeral? Once we know the kinds of people we want to be formed into, we can work backward and think of steps we can start taking to be formed into those people. Using Aro is a small step that can help form me into the wife, mother, sister, friend, minister, and follower of Jesus I want to be. My phone does not do much to help me become that person.

What’s your favorite book?

I absolutely love to read, so it's very hard to pick just one. Probably The Chronicles of Narnia (we can count it as one book because my edition is all seven in one volume).

What are some of your favorite activities to do when you do put down your phone?

Watch whatever new trick my seven-month-old daughter is learning, share a meal with a friend, play outside, try to learn the guitar, sit around the fire with my husband, and so much more.

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