2023-05-28 — Burn Baby, Burn

As surprising as it might be, yesterday was a repeat of Saturday. I was positive and upbeat and unconcerned about all of the many issues in my life that have been weighing me down for so long.

Go figure. 🙃

I spent the whole day super busy, mowing the strip of grass by the mailbox and front fence. Mowing the walkway from the main road on the property to the deck over the creek , mowing the hill by the pond that’s super tricky to mow because even using the brakes on the mower, I can’t keep it slow enough to be comfortable with the speed going down the hill.

It all looks a heck of a lot better than it has recently.

Oh, and I mowed the strip of grass that’s along the front road where there are a couple young trees growing. It was overgrowing with a whole crap ton of saplings, so I’ve been trying to get those under control.

After that, I spent a lot of time cleaning a rug for my mom– dragging it outside, covering it in soap, and scrubbing scrubbing scrubbing.

When thinking about how to dry it out after I was done cleaning it, I was grateful that I had the thought pop into my head to coil it up and stand it on its end. That meant that all the water would just run out of it. 🥳

That was super effective and made it a lot easier to deal with after having cleaned it.

After that, I went and grabbed the loppers and went to all of the trees around the yard that had low hanging branches, clipping them all off so that none of them are below head level.

We have a gazillion trees, so that’s not a quick task. 🙃

Then I spent the entire rest of the day, and into the night, burning tree leftovers from trees that were cut a good long time ago. Both sides of our very long dirt-road driveway have been covered in dead trees and branches and whatnot for a long time.

It doesn’t seem like it should take as long as it does, but my goodness, up and down and up and down and up and down the driveway and all over the yard, and on and on. Wish I had my step counter downloaded, as I probably would have been somewhere around 30,000 steps, I would guess.

When I first started the fire, I was expecting it to burn pretty slowly. Often times, I have to coax it just to get it to go, but not this time. I started the fire, And within probably 30 to 60 seconds, the flames were 15 ft high or so.

😬

That… wasn’t so good.

Little trees were getting scorched, and given how huge the flames had gotten so quickly, I ran up the hill, grabbed a hose, connected it to the other side of the house and dragged it down.

But it wasn’t long enough. 😬

And the flames were huge. 😬😬😬

So I ran back and grabbed another hose, connected it to the first one, and dragged it down.

That did it.

Should have had the hoses ready from the beginning. I usually do. 😕

Oh well. Live and learn.

So yeah, I spent the entire day busting my butt and making really good progress cleaning everything up and making it look nicer.

With the massive amount of time put in, I feel like I should have accomplished more, but I did get a lot done, and by the end of the night, I was so exhausted that I was running on nothing but fumes, just mentally forcing myself to exert my body when my body was just exhausted.

I think I overheated myself pretty good, too, because all those big veins were bulging out in my temples and sides of my forehead, with my pulse pounding through those veins. I also had a bit of a headache, and I think thats related to just getting so hot?

When I first started working today, I started listening to the Mormon Tabernacle choir. I hadn’t listened to any of that stuff in somewhere around 2 years maybe. And it was… really nice. It was so peaceful and so filling. Like my soul just craved it. The music I’ve been listening to for the last two years or so wasn’t even appealing.

These last couple of days have been really weird. 🙃

Like I mentioned about Saturday, it’s like my brain has been reset, like I’ve been transported back in time.

I really hope this lighter feeling lasts.

I’m grateful for the respite from all the pain and pressure.

I’m grateful that I was able to get the driveway looking a heck of a lot better than it has been.

I’m grateful, I think? for the reset. I’m not sure yet what all meaning I’m going to give it. I’m hesitant to attribute it all to God, partly because I just want to be skeptical. I don’t want to dive right back into God stuff because I feel like I want to prove God somehow instead of just trusting again because somehow I think maybe that’s too easy?

It’s clearly not easy… but I don’t want to take the time to find the most-accurate words right now.

I don’t know. I just… If I’m going to go back to trusting God, that there is one, and that he’s the loving being I once thought I knew him to be, I don’t want to lose that again. I want to have a stronger foundation so that when things fall apart in my life according to my own view of things, when It would be easy to feel like God has lied to me, that I… don’t go there.

I want a solid foundation to stand on so I’m not able to be knocked off so easily again.

Well, i shouldn’t say easy… It was a long, very hard, very painful battle before I finally crumbled.

And just choosing to believe again, even with what’s happened over the last couple days as well as the experiences that seemed to be direct communication with God in the middle of my anger toward God over the last months, even with that, I don’t want to just trust. I want to prove it.

Clearly my soul has missed God. And clearly my being is one that longs for the spiritual.

What these coming days bring, I have no idea. I guess we’ll find out together. 🙃

Love and hugs. 😊

Lift the World

~ stephen