Cold cereal breakfast, and then it was off to rapid City to run errands with Heather and Hans.
First stop on the list was to go to the windshield replacement shop. The appointment was for 11:00, and rapid City is I think maybe a 40 minute drive? I honestly don’t remember, but I think it’s somewhere between 40 minutes and an hour north.
Anyway, we stopped into the repair shop to drop the car off, most of us, if not all of us, took advantage of the opportunity to use their bathroom, and then they, quite surprisingly, gave us a loaner car!
Really?!?!
A loaner car? No fee? Don’t even need to return it full of gas?
😶
That was super super convenient for us because we had a number of errands to run that we’re all across rapid City, and it was going to be 2 or 3 hours before they would be able to have the windshield done and the sealant/adhesive cured.
We had been trying to figure out what we would do during those hours while we waited for it, thinking about places we could walk to, but with the offer of the loaner car, holy moly!
So we went over to Lowe’s so they could return a few things that they had bought from there. Then we went over to Menard’s, so they can return something that they bought from there. They purchased a few things from Menard’s, and my mom bought herself a step stool, which I’m happy about, because even though we’re almost done with our little trip, I’m glad my mom has a stepping stool to make it safer for her to get in and out of the back of the van.
Next, since it was hans’s birthday on Sunday, my mom took us all out to a Himalayan /Indian restaurant for lunch, a favorite of hans’s.
The food was super tasty, and they had some options for little vegan me. Although I think it was more vegetarian than vegan? I don’t remember for sure. No, maybe it was vegan. Clearly, I don’t remember for sure. 🙃
Anyway, we got a message that the windshield had been replaced, so we went and dropped the loaner car off, and picked up the little VW wagon.
From there, we went to another shop just to kind of window shop. As we were exiting our vehicle, we realized that the SUV next to us had a whole bunch of merchandise in the back of their SUV with a hatch open, and the person who owned it had disappeared into the store inside. It was not inexpensive merchandise, either. So we waited there for the gentleman to come back, and then we helped him bring everything into the store.
Apparently, he was the store owner, maybe? I didn’t catch it for sure, but it looks that way.
Anyway, he was really grateful, and we window shopped for a little while, before heading out with the message that the car windshield had been replaced.
On our way out, we realized, because the parking enforcement officer was standing at the vehicle right next to ours, that we had forgotten to put money in the coin-operated parking machines.
It was really cool, though, that as we walked up to our car expecting to get a ticket, the lady who was the enforcement officer said that she hadn’t gotten to ours yet, so we were free to leave Even though ours was blinking in violation.
She was, however, in the process of giving a ticket to the shop owner. We had all forgotten to pay our parking fees because we were carrying in all of his stuff.
Gratefully, when Hans offered to pay for the gentleman’s parking fees, the parking enforcement officer was like, well I haven’t hit the button to finish the ticket, so yeah, no worries. So Hans paid for the shop owners parking fee, which he realized as he came out and was thankful.
From there, we headed home. I think I skipped dinner because we had a late lunch, and I didn’t want to eat that late and risk having issues sleeping because of stomach problems.
While I was out with everyone, I received an email notification which informed me of a request for me to share a Google document with someone who used to have access to it. A long time ago, when I was making changes to files on my Google drive and the people with whom I had shared certain documents, I had accidentally unshared the document. I had actually created it as a birthday gift, so it never should have been unshared.
😬
But that oversight is now corrected, as I went ahead and reshared that document. 😊
Anyway, we watched a couple of episodes of Psych, introducing my mom to the TV show and then jumping to whatever episode in season 3 my sister and brother-in-law were on.
I didn’t want to not watch it with them. I’ve been moving back away from that kind of entertainment, going back to the habits and commitments I was keeping and making during the most spiritually uplifting time of my life.
But it was also an opportunity to be there with my family and sharing something that I at least used to enjoy and they still do.
Granted, I still enjoy it. 🙃 I just want to be doing different things than that now.
Moving on…
Something that’s been on my mind, quite poignantly lately… What am I willing to sacrifice, (as the scripture goes), “for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.”
If I’m being honest, the gospel of Jesus Christ, as I understand it, fills my heart and soul. It’s what I love. I’ve missed it.
I’ve been returning, slowly, to that place where I was some years back. And it’s been good. Certainly, I have a long way to go, but it’s been good.
For the last many many years, I’ve been holding on and hoping and waiting and struggling. There’s been so much pain and so much fear and so much anger because I just kept holding on so tightly, afraid of losing what I wanted most.
But something has changed. I hope it’s not fleeting. I think I’m ready.
I hope I’m ready.
I think I might be ready to let go, to lay my deepest hopes and desires on the altar, and to stick with God, choosing to trust and follow him even if I never get the things that I want most in this life, letting go of all my fear and pain and anger.
I do think that this will be a continual effort, but I am grateful, at least at the moment, to do as was once written “to lay down his all—his character and reputation, his honor and applause, his good name among men, his houses, his lands, his brothers and sisters, his wife and children, and even his own life also, counting all things but filth and dross for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.”
That’s my heart. That’s what I want to do. The god that I once came to know… He’s just the best. He’s very misunderstood. But being like him and doing as he does trumps everything for me. And I don’t know if the things I lay on the altar will actually be required, or if, like with Abraham, there might be a ram in the thicket.
Truthfully, I hope the latter is the case. Also, I have nothing to prove to god. God already knows my heart. There’s nothing to prove. This, laying my whole heart on God’s altar, is for me. It’s for me to gain faith and trust in myself. To see my own heart. To plum its depths.
I’ve had these things on my mind for a few days now, ever since my experience at the Boulder Branch in Montana.
I can’t pretend that this will be easy. I’ve been longing for the things I’ve hoped and dreamed for for years and years. But I do want to know that I would be willing to give anything to have the heart of Christ, and to be like my father in heaven. There’s no greater gift that I could give to anyone anywhere than to become that person, and there’s no greater joy that I could ever have, then to be that person and to be able to love and serve others like Father does.
Boy, what a journey. I’ve been thinking about testimony. Personally, my default state is to be skeptical and doubt. My entire life I’ve heard analogies about faith being like a muscle, that it has to be exercised, and if you don’t exercise, it grows weak.
It’s funny. I used to have a powerful testimony of the nature and character of God and the truths he had taught me. But I lost those because I succumbed to my nature. It wasn’t so much the skepticism, as it was the fear and then the doubt.
I don’t know how long it’ll be before I return to that man of faith I once was. I hope it won’t be too long. I miss having the power of God in my heart and my mind. I miss having the spirit fill my whole soul. I miss being taught and shown things by the spirit that I didn’t know before.
I miss that light in my life.
But I’m on my way back to it. Cross your fingers, maybe it won’t take too long.
That’s a little bit of a sidetrack on the events of the day, but those are the most important events of my heart right now.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 