Today was the Maverick-to-Walmart routine, spending a decent night at the PG Maverick, waking up several times for sure, but sleeping a decent amount, I think, and staying most of the night at the Maverick and then switching over to the nearby Supercenter about 7:00 to keep sleeping. 🙃
Today has been… full of light.
😊
I sent my friend Robyn a message this morning hoping to visit her before I leave town, as I’ve been in Utah for 2 weeks and still hadn’t caught up with her.
She replied back that she would be available in about an hour, or so, so I pointed rover’s nose North from the PG Supercenter and headed up to the Salt Lake valley.
I figured it would probably be best for me to swing by Cory’s place, both because I had arranged to make a trade with him–his exhaust system for some of the stuff that I brought with me to Utah hoping to sell) and also because I figured I might as well chill with him until I got the go-ahead that Robyn was home.
So he and I started chatting, and it turned spiritual very quickly. My heart has been turning more and more toward God over the last month, or so. I’ve been on the cusp of a full return, getting closer and closer, and it’s become natural now for me to want to talk about gospel things.
That’s where my heart is. That’s where my soul lives and breathes, and I starve it and suffocate it when I’m not in that place.
The difference is so striking.
We talked about a lot of things, and it was just… so nice. I’ve missed the piece. I’ve missed the light. Light started returning today more quickly than I expected.
After a couple of hours of chatting with Cory, and not hearing from Robyn, I decided to just go ahead and head over to her place. Cory needed to make lunch for his mom anyway, and I wanted to see Robyn.
So I stopped by the house that she’s renting while her flooded out house gets fixed, and her vehicles were there, and her dogs barked and came to the front window when I knocked on the door, but she never answered.
So I headed over to her main house that she’s hoping to move back into once all the flood repairs are done, hopefully in the next month or two, but there wasn’t any sign of life at all in that house.
So I gave up, sent her a text message, and started driving away, thinking I would head back over and hang out with Cory a bit more, but gratefully she quickly called me back, apparently having fallen asleep while sitting down on the edge of her bed right after having gotten home.
Poor exhausted Robyn.
I know that exhaustion.
Anyway, I turned around and headed back to her main house, where she was going to give me a walk-through of everything that’s happened.
She gave me the walkthrough, and we chatted, and quite quickly things turned toward the gospel with her as well. It really was a great conversation.
It was really good to see her and spend time with her. While we were there, one of the members of the congregation that I used to attend while I was living in that area stopped by to visit, so I saw her for the first time in 9 years. 🙃
I was starting to have a pretty big headache (the less effective side of my brain decided I wasn’t going to eat today, or at least not much, in an effort to combat the pansita growing around my midsection. 🙃
Or maybe it’s just that I’m still sick?
Anyway, after visiting with her and making arrangements to continue our conversation tomorrow, I headed back to visit Cory.
Again, we chatted for a good little while, again about gospel things.
It’s amazing to me how quickly peace and light has returned. Feelings of the spirit, light and truth and knowledge that I had lost and forgotten began coming back as we talked. Perspectives and understandings came back as we talked.
It was so nice. 😊
Eventually, he had to leave start preparations for Easter with his family tomorrow, and I decided to head south, thinking I would go back to Utah County because I wasn’t going to be back visiting Robin until tomorrow.
While driving, my oldest brother texted me to encourage me through one of my challenges, sending me of YouTube video to watch, which I watched, well, listen to as I drove. We texted back and forth for a while. Good stuff. It’s a blessing to have family who love and care so much about me.
I didn’t end up going back to Utah County but stopped off at the Walmart Supercenter at 114th South to buy some things that I needed, some hand sanitizer, and some migraine pills, among other things.
Spent probably 2 hours talking to my sister Heather, a conversation which turned spiritual pretty much immediately, and which ended up with my mind returning to so much of what I used to think and know and believe and feel on a daily basis.
And new light, and new perspectives, and new ways of understanding and describing things.
Gosh, how I wish I could remember some of the things that came out of my mouth. They came out in ways that were far too eloquent and cogent for my own brain to have produced by itself without help.
I’ve missed that experience in those feelings so much.
I’m reminded of something Boyd k packer quoted Marion g Romney as having said on many occasions:
“I always know when I am speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost because I always learn something from what I’ve said.”
Gosh I miss that.
My experience today, a giant leap forward for me in my growth, is what I have longed for.
I’ve just been… So lonely… so angry… so hurt…
I haven’t wanted to face the possibility that God’s plan for me, the timing of that plan, was different than what I had understood and hoped for. I felt cheated and misled and toyed with.
And in all honesty, I haven’t come to an understanding of all of that that I’m settled with, but my anger toward God has melted away, and I just long to have that close relationship that I used to have.
I’m finally willing to say that I don’t understand why things have gone the way they have gone, but I don’t need to understand right now.
I will be grateful for whatever comes, like the underlying message of the Christian movie Facing the Giants, and like the words I used to live by, trusting and following the Lord with “nothing expected other than the privilege.”
I asked for God to bring it on. That was my continual prayer and request year after year after year beginning in the fall of 2009 for probably nearly a decade, I think.
And I was serious and sincere. I told God that I wanted to become like him as quickly as possible and wanted whatever experiences were necessary to get me there, however hard they might be.
And when he let the floodgates down, at first I stood firm, but then the floodgates opened more, and then more, and then more, and I would sometimes stand firm, and I would sometimes slip under the water, but I kept getting back up.
This last time I let myself get washed away pretty far.
But my face is pointed toward God again, and as I like to remember from something that Jeffrey r Holland said many years back, “it takes exactly as long to repent as it does to say I’ll change and mean it.”
I’m grateful to God for being patient with me.
How ironic that I would pray for the gift of receiving whatever challenges were necessary to help me become like him as quickly as possible, and then resent him, deeply, for giving me the very thing that I asked for.
I wanted whatever it took…
Except that.
Not that. Anything but that!
I’m reminded of the words in Job: 25 For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.
And what the words of Neil A. Maxwell, perhaps a little out of context but still true, I believe: “The things that we would most like to avoid, therefore, will often be the things that confront us most directly and most sharply.”
What a beautiful day it’s been in so many ways 🥰
I’m going to take some time tomorrow, maybe tonight after I finish writing here, to try to remember some of the words and phrases that came out of my mouth during my conversation with my sister, as I want those to remain a part of my conceptual framework and descriptive data bank going forward.
After I finished chatting with my sister, I headed over to my brother Richard’s house. I’m going to go back to church tomorrow for the first time in… over a year, I think. I had been out of the church for a long time when I came back for a brief period in the fall of 2023 to the spring of 2024, before I walked back into the darkness.
There have been lots of goings and coming. Stepping out of the darkness toward the light and walking from the light back to the darkness.
I’m a little nervous. This last time after leaving, my perspectives and desires have changed in some key areas of the gospel and of the church that will be a little challenging for me to go back into–specifically, tithing and callings.
I’ve never had a problem with tithing at all in my life until this last go-round of leaving and now coming back. It’s not the money that I’m concerned about because my whole goal is to use the money I have to serve others anyway: The challenge is being willing to be humble enough to allow the money to be used to serve others in different ways than I might want to use it to serve others.
My other challenge will be similar: I don’t look forward to having callings again, again because I want to use my time to serve how I want to serve and not as a responsibility as part of a congregation.
So those will be challenges, but I also know they will be opportunities for me to swallow my pride and humble myself, and if those are things the Lord asks me to do, then I will again do them.
It’s funny… I’ve had all these beautiful experiences today, and yet I’m still hesitant to really pray. There’s still so much apprehension I think in the possibility of returning to God only to walk away again when things don’t go the way I want them to in the time frame that I want them to.
I felt betrayed before. Toyed with. So it was easy to walk away.
I’m hoping that this time I will be willing to give all glory to God, come what may, to praise him and thank him even and especially in the midst of my pain and suffering.
Can you guess where the conversation went when I got to my brother’s house? 🙃
We chatted for probably a couple of hours, and yes, again about gospel things. 🙃
Giant leap today.
Good stuff.
For about a month ish maybe? I honestly don’t know how long… I’ve been reminded multiple times of a document that my friend Brittani and I wrote out way back in 2020, I think it was?
It was just a simple list of spiritual experiences that we had that were testimonies to us of what we believed. Not experiences that we had had together, just experiences that we had had in our individual lives that were witnesses to us of what we believed, such as of existence and reality of god, etc. We wrote them down to shine a light on truth if we found ourselves struggling in the dark, having forgotten.
I want to say that we titled the document something like “For When We Forget.”
Ironically, I’ve searched and searched for the document, and I can’t find it anywhere.
I’m going to remake the list for myself, but having experienced the reality of having forgotten some of my most powerful spiritual experiences because I simply didn’t write them down, only to be reminded years later and be shocked that I could have forgotten about that experience, I’m wondering if there are experiences that I wrote down on that document that I have since forgotten.
I hope I can find that document.
But I guess now is a perfect opportunity for me to practice giving glory to God. Whether I find it or don’t find it, I will give the glory and gratitude to God.
Speaking of gratitude…
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful to have had so many wonderful conversations today with family and friends about beautiful gospel things that fill my soul.
- I’m grateful, deeply grateful, to feel peace and light flowing back into my heart and soul.
- I’m grateful for a patient, loving God who never turns his back or gets annoyed or holds a grudge, even when I unjustly curse him at the top of my lungs, and seethe with anger and hatred toward him.
- I’m grateful to feel myself speaking by the inspiration of the spirit, to listen to what’s coming out of my mouth almost as a third party observer, not even knowing what I’m going to say because I’m not the one, really, who’s saying it. Oh, how I have missed that!
- I’m grateful for the perspective on life and eternity that is returning. I hope that I can hold fast this time and not return to that angry heart that I’ve held on to for so long.
Success:
- Multiple times today when tempted to place my focus in trivial things, I was able to remind myself not just that I didn’t want to participate in those things anymore, but that I wanted to choose those things that would increase my love for others. Sports news… I imagine that it could be comical for some of you to read as I return to the perspectives that I’ve held for so many years, that I don’t want to spend my life focusing on sports and sports news, or in movies or TV, even though there have been times, such as with that movie Facing the Giants, that I’ve been reminded of beautiful truths. I always return to that perspective of wanting to partake of only the butter and honey that is available to me and not waste a moment in anything less than what is best for me.
Improvement:
- It wasn’t very smart of me to choose not to eat today just because I want to lose weight. I want to make progress quickly in that area and not have to wait very long, but it’s not healthy to do it simply by starving myself, even if it is just for a day. My body isn’t really capable of going without food and water anymore without causing migraines and other health issues, it appears, so I just need to suck it up and do the hard work of exercising and eating well going forward and slowly losing the weight that I’ve gained by my inability to control my emotional eating. Here we go! 😎
Loves. 🥰
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 