2020-10-02 — Falling Forward

Today I made what felt like some really significant progress toward becoming the kind of person I want to become. It wasn’t for the greatest reason that I had the opportunity to choose what I chose, but I feel like I made the most of it.

You see… I relapsed again in the middle of the night and this morning. I was up super late helping a friend out of a jam, didn’t get home until like, what, 2:30? And then… boom–thought popped in. I even reached out for support, and my support person was great, but I’d already had some switch in my brain flipped, and I was careening over the cliff.

At maybe 8:30 this morning, I felt awful. I was discouraged–really discouraged. Feeling hopeless, etc.

Then… something changed. I messaged my ecclesiastical leader about it–without even worrying a lick about others’ judgments.

🥳

I was just… humbled, humbled enough to just let the pride go–letting go of that drive of basically wanting everyone to worship me, and to just ask for help.

It was so… nice! It was so nice to be free, at least this time, of the fear of others’ judgments and my position in the imaginary hierarchy of people here on earth. There’s a state I like from one of the LDS prophets from back in the late 80s. He said, “When pride has a hold on our hearts, we lose our independence of the world and deliver our freedoms to the bondage of men’s judgments.”

I’ve found this to be so true in my life, and today, I felt some freedom instead of bondage.

The irony being that it’s taking bondage to addiction to help me be free of a far more insidious problem–that problem of pride.

So… I was excited about that today. Not only that, but even though I got up late and the day was already off and running, I deliberately chose to put it on hold to put first things first. Prayer, study, and pondering.

What resulted was me going from being super discouraged a couple hours before to being confident, focusing, determined, and even happy. Amazingly, I’ve managed to hold onto the perspective and the peace and all that pretty much the whole day!

The main downer that challenged me was when the doctor’s office called to tell me the results of my nerve conduction test found that my nerves were totally fine, no problems. Which was frustrating because I know they’re not fine. They suggested the issue might be in my neck, and I was told the bill for the 15-minute visit was $709–after their discount for being self pay.

😶

Wow… $1000 between the two visits for one doctor who didn’t even really try to figure anything out, just sent me on my way, and one doctor who was super nice, but… $700+?

Ugh.

Why do I always have to figure out the issues that I have? I spend thousands of dollars for doctors to tell me they can’t figure it out, and then I spend years on the internet and finally figure it out myself and go to the doctors to confirm the issues.

Anyway, I’m actually fine right now, but I was frustrated for, I don’t know, maybe 15-30 minutes. Other than that, it’s been a pretty good day. I spent several hours working on that nightmare car, and I only got frustrated for maybe 10 minutes of the whole thing, so that was good.

I headed home late, took a wrong turn, and ended up on dirt road in Missouri where I came across a possum that had had it’s face run over, and was in agony in the middle of the road.

I got out and wanted to help it, but it wasn’t going to be able to be saved. I ended up finishing it off to put it out of it’s misery. That wasn’t fun. I didn’t have a gun or anything, so it got pretty violent, and… yeah… not fun. But I was able to put it out of it’s misery, and I’m grateful for that at least. It was making such awful noises as it hobbled in agony with blood all over the road. So sad. So so sad. Not something I’d like to remember long term.

Anyway, I’m home. It’s 10:32. My eyes are closing. I only got four hours or so of sleep last night, and I’m a little over the edge physically, but I’m gonna get to bed here in just a few minutes, so that’s something.

Oh! While I was praying this morning, I had the thought pop into my head that I felt was inspired. I write “Lift the World” all the time, but in the last 3 months, I’ve been so focused on other personal things that I haven’t done much at all with an outward focus of lifting the world, so to speak. But the thought came while I was praying, that it would be valuable for me to deliberately plan and carry out 10 ways each day that I’m going to lift the world. I really want to focus on love. That’s my biggest goal–love others with a pure and perfect love–and this 10 daily lift-the-world activities/acts of service/acts of love I think will be very helpful to that end.

#1. I’m grateful that I’m upbeat and focused and determined on a day where I relapsed.

#2. I’m grateful that I was able to choose humility over pride today in this issue that has historically been such a challenge to my pride, with me failing more often than not in letting go of my concerns of others’ judgments.

#3. I’m grateful I was rather patient with the nightmare car. I’ve still got probably three hours of work left to go on it, and then we can all cross our fingers and hope that I did the repair okay. This is my first time ever doing a lower intake/plenum gasket. It’s take… forever. I’ve probably spent 6 hours just cleaning parts.

Yeah.

#4. I’m grateful to be getting to bed at a better hour tonight.

#5. I’m grateful that I was able to better align my actions with the priorities I want to have as tippy top in my life.

Well, folks, good day. Time for bed. Tomorrow is the LDS General Conference. I haven’t watched it in two years, having left the church or that time. There have been a ton of changes in the church over those last two years. It’ll be interesting to see what comes tomorrow. I also have some pretty important things I’d love further direction from God about, and perhaps that direction, if it’s a good time for me to receive it, will come tomorrow.

Loves and hugs, my lovelies.

Lift the World.

~ stephen