I had a lot on my mind today (written on the 25th).
I’ve mentioned that I have been getting to the point where either something needs to change, or I’m not going to make it.
Well, today I made the choice to make a change.
I woke up from my little spot at the hospital on 8th North in Orem, headed up Provo Canyon use the bathroom, and then drove up to the slide canyon parking lot.
Unfortunately, I realized that I didn’t have any water with me, so I went back down to the little park that has the bathroom and the drinking fountain, and I filled up my water.
Then it was back up to Slide Canyon.
It’s funny, I’ve been in Utah for a good while now, and I haven’t gone up to any of my little special spots. Things have just been so crazy that it hasn’t even entered my mind, really. Taxes, taxes and more taxes. Scrambling to see some family members before driving down to my dad and step mom’s house, scrambling back to see some friends before we book it out of town on Sunday night.
It’s just been a whirlwind, and I lost a good chunk of my vacation in Utah to that tax mess. But there I was at Slide canyon–Finally. 😊
And I had a lot of thinking to do.
I put on my sweat pants and sweatshirt and headed up the canyon. I didn’t go up super far, really just to my favorite waterfall and maybe 100 or 200 yards further than that. It was beautiful, and it was also rather cold and very windy.
I was going to just sit and think, but for some reason, I was concerned about mountain lions and also rocks or boulders breaking loose from the side cliffs.
I don’t usually worry much at all about those kinds of things, but this time, for whatever reason, I did. So I stayed just a little while at my favorite waterfall before hiking probably halfway back down, and finding a little ledge at the bottom of a very small drop off that was flush all the way down instead of having an overhang.
I sat there for a while thinking, feeling the super cold and super strong wind blowing, and watching the power line, or whatever it was, be blown significantly back and forth in the wind. I wouldn’t be surprised if it blew 40 ft to the side, at times, with some of the super strong gusts. It was pretty nutty to see how far it moved.
I think I did a little bit of crying as I sat and thought. It’s been a rough… very long time for me.
The sharpness of the cold and the strength of the wind began to take its toll, chilling me more than I had expected. So I decided to head back the rest of the way down the canyon and back to the parking lot where my car was parked.
Once I got to my car, I started going back through some things that a friend of mine had written, lots and lots of spiritual things that were shared with me a good while back.
I read through many of those and was reminded of some of the experiences that I’ve had but I forgot about that were really important.
And there was one that reminded me specifically of an experience I had back when I was thinking maybe 16 or 17 where I was trying to figure out truth. It was a similarly painful time in my life, and I didn’t know what was true about life or god or any of that. I remember that during that time I read a passage in the Bible in the New testament from Matthew in the beatitudes. The specific one that caught my attention was “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”
I remember thinking to myself, well, if that’s how you prove that there’s a god or not, then okay, I want to be pure and heart So that I can see God.
Well, going back through many of those things that my friend had written, which included some things that I had written and shared, when I read one of the ones that I had written and shared, I had a very similar experience as I did when I was a 16-year-old. There was a promise that I felt like God had given me, and there was a condition upon that promise to live a certain way in order to receive that promise.
I had totally forgotten about that.
The doubt and the fear and the pain had just been too strong, and I just… broke.
But walking away from what I trusted in has been even more painful. It used to be that as long as I trusted, I had peace, and I got continual reassurances that I was walking the right road.
But when I’m not trusting, there’s been no peace and no reassurances of anything at all. So instead of having peace, intermixed with doubt and fear, I’ve pretty much had nothing but doubt and fear and pain and anger.
But as I read that promise that I felt like God had given me, I made the decision. I made the decision to go back.
I chose to give God a try again, so to speak.
I’ve never stopped believing, as in actually truly not believing: I’ve just lost all confidence and trust and sometimes wished that I could stop believing. Mostly, however, it has simply just been fear and doubt and distrust… and a lot of pain and anger.
The problem is, like I mentioned the other day, thresholds of belief. I talked about thresholds of belief and thresholds of disbelief, and my thresholds of belief were met sufficiently at least with all the experiences that I’ve had to make it so that my threshold for disbelief is massively high.
Doubt and fear, on the other hand, are as natural to me as waking up in the morning, it seems. So I can have doubt and fear just about all the time, worrying that I’m wrong and what not.
But there is a big difference between doubt and fear and actually having a collection of events and evidences reach that threshold of disbelief.
And I’ve just realized that my threshold of disbelief is so high that I think it really isn’t possible for me to fully disbelieve. Doubt and fear and anger are the closest that I can come, but I can’t deny all of the experiences that I’ve had.
That doesn’t mean that I’m right about them. It just means that I can’t deny them and almost certainly never will be able to.
Accordingly, it just doesn’t seem possible for me to go from the state that I was to a true state of disbelief.
Knowing that reality, and realizing that I’m pretty much dependent upon god, whether there is one or not, I realized that the next course of action for me to take is to do what I’ve been dreading for this last nearly 2 years, or whatever it’s been.
Give God a try again and at least make my choices as though I were an active believer who trusted God.
So that’s what I chose to do.
Today marks a great shift, and a return to where I once was. Basically, I made the decision to return all of my perspectives and all of my actions to the highest, the pinnacle of spirituality and peace that I have ever felt. So I am just rewinding back to that point and moving forward as though I had never altered my course.
Of course, as I’ve expressed just recently, I don’t believe that choosing to believe is something you can just decide to do. I’m not choosing to believe. I’m choosing to act as though I believe, and test to see what happens, so to speak.
I neither fully believe, but nor do I disbelieve. This is an exercise to see what happens in my life. I’m going back and facing a pretty powerful fear in the process. In the past, going back to that path that I have followed for so many years, each time I’ve doubted and feared, when I come back, I’ve always felt peace. I doubt and fear because the things that I want are still seemingly so far away and getting farther away, and so I get afraid that I never will get them. But when I just turn back to God and say that I trust him, and actually do, then peace flows into my life, and I get a confirmation that I’m on the right track.
As per what I mentioned above, or related to it, I guess, one of the reasons why it’s taken me so long to go back is that I’m afraid it’s just going to happen again: I’m going to go back, and I’m going to feel peace, and I’m going to feel like the path that I was on is still the right path. That’s super scary because… It means continuing to wait for what I’m wanting most instead of choosing to go out and get it in my timeline.
The appears to be but I haven’t been able to enjoy what I wanted most because I’m simply not ready for it.
So… I’m going to do everything that I possibly can to be ready for it.
The message that I got from God was to be obedient in all things. It was that I was going to need to be obedient in all things in order to enjoy the blessings that I have wanted for mortality. He told me that he wouldn’t let me falter if I truly wanted the blessings, but I did need to be obedient in all things, and at the time was now.
Well, similar to when I was 16 and wanted to see God and believed that in order to do so, I had to be pure in heart, this time, I want the blessings that I have longed for, and the requirement is to be obedient in all things.
Thus the rewind. I’m rewinding to my peak of spirituality. Clearly, I can’t just choose the peace and the spiritual experiences. I can’t make them come back, but I can choose to live like I did then. And so that’s what I’m going to do.
So here we go. 😅
So, all at once, I’m going to be back to going to church and doing all those things that an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints does. 😅
That’s going to be quite the turnaround. 🙃
That also means that I’m once again going to cut out TV and movies, sports, news, politics, and all that stuff that I often use as an escape from… pain.
It means I’m going to get my unruly tongue under control.
Lots of things…
After making that rather momentous decision, I started to plan all of the things, like those above, that I needed to change, and I started to make a list of them.
I also started watching some podcasts about some more weighty subjects about the church in an effort to try and ease myself in, so to speak. 😅
It’s going to be an adventure. 🙃
By that point, it was well after dark, and I had just been sitting in my car in the slide Canyon parking lot. I decided to go ahead and call it a night, so I drove back down to the hospital on 8th North in Orem, parked in a different corner of the parking lot because there was a big piece of construction equipment next to where I usually park, and I crashed for the night.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 