Discipline.
I want to get back to the level of discipline I used to have.
Choosing to write my journal entry tonight when I’m tired and don’t want to, as small of a choice as that might be, is part of the effort to return to discipline.
I want to get back to where I was spiritually.
So much needs to happen for me to get back there. And then once there, to move forward again.
My golden years of spiritual growth were 2009 to 2016.
Those were the best years of my life.
My relationship with God was… so good. I had cut out of my life those things that were taking me away from what I wanted most.
Those years were such. amazing. years, spiritually.
They were also some of the most gut-wrenching of my life.
Not a coincidence.
Bring it on. That was my motto. Come with me, and love it. Bring it on. God said that I could be like him. How long did I want it to take?
I didn’t want it to take long, so I said bring it on. Bring on all the hardest that I could ever have to go through. Put me through it right now because I’m going to have to go through it at some point, might as well be now.
I didn’t know what I was asking. I had no idea how hard it would be. But for the last many years now, I have tasted. I have partaken of a measure of the cost.
And for the last handful of years, I have been found wanting.
Gratefully, God wastes nothing. The anger that I have harbored, the resentment, deep resentment, pain. The sorrows. The struggles.
I’m softer now. I’m more patient now. I’m more understanding now.
I let confusion and doubt and fear transform into bitterness and resentment and anger and assumption and judgment. I forgot many of my spiritual experiences. I distrusted others of my spiritual experiences, and I walked away from God.
But he never walked away from me.
I still don’t have a clue as to why things happened the way they did. But I’m not angry or bitter at God anymore. I just hope someday to get answers.
In the meantime, glory to God.
Wow, that wasn’t unexpected tangent. I’ve had lots of gospel conversations lately, and I just want to get back to where I was where I had managed to remove from my life everything that in any way kept me from being able to feel the fullness of the spirit. I didn’t waste my time with sports or movies or TV or news, etc. i didn’t listen to music except that which actually filled me with the spirit.
That was the best time of my life.
I’ve known that. Y’all have watched me try and get back there several times over the last handful of years. I’ve tried and tried. Sometimes I’ve gotten closer than other times, but I’ve never gotten all the way back.
The closest I came to getting back was in 2020 when an unexpected reconnection lit a fire that burned hot for a good while before I let it Go out again.
Come on, Stephen. Stop wasting your time on YouTube videos that aren’t the best use of your time. Stop wasting your time in sports and entertainment.
Dig deep.
Did Deep!
I’m tired. But I’m writing this tonight because it’s an opportunity to exercise discipline. It’s an opportunity to dig a little bit.
I’m grateful to have been able to wake up after a decent night’s sleep, having been undisturbed parked in the upper RV parking lot high above the rest of the parking lots and above the casino slash hotel.
I’m starting to fall asleep as I write this, flashbacks to 2020 in the spring when I was starting to get a really good handle on my life before things went crazy again.
I hung out in the parking lot there for hours. I don’t remember what all I was doing. Eventually, I headed on up the road to Vernon a Nichols County Park. I had thought about going to a nearby reservoir, but I had read about a significant number of people drowning in that reservoir due to strong underwater currents, and was out of my way, and I noticed that cache Creek ran along the highway that connects up to the highway that goes up to where my sister Rebecca lives, so I looked along the creek and saw a park and decided to head over.
I thought maybe it would give me a nice chance to jump in the water. 🙃
So I headed on up the road, and I found the part, and it was a ridiculously dilapidated Park, but there was indeed the river, cache creek, on it.
I spent the next 2 hours chatting with my brother Richard, mostly about life and gospel stuff.
There was a large colony of Cliff swallows, I think is what they are, the ones that build mud nests on the underside of bridges and cliffs and whatnot. That was cool. I also saw I think what was it California King snake? Black with white stripes, disappearing underneath the boulders just as I noticed it.
I did go in the river, sitting down in about 2 ft of water, so that the water was up to my shoulders. So there I was with my absolutely massive Sun hat, my long sleeve shirt and long pants, sitting in the water so that only my head and big sun hat were out of the water. Well, my right hand was out of the water as well because it was holding the cell phone that I was talking to my brother with.
So we chatted for a good while, and I took pictures of the swallows and a couple of videos as well. Eventually, Richard and I finished up our conversation, and then I drove up the road to head to my sister’s place.
I don’t know if I have ever driven on highway 16 before, but if I have, I forgot about it because it was actually a pretty beautiful drive the river in the valley for a while, but then you follow it as it goes up into the hills, and you just wind through The hills watching the beautiful River.
I was definitely pleasantly surprised by that.
Once I got to clear lake, I headed over to the Walmart Supercenter, forgetting every time I come, that it’s a sort of mini supercenter. It’s got only a little bit of selection on the grocery side of things, but it’s lacking pretty significantly.
Anyway, so there wasn’t a whole lot to get that I would normally have gotten. I bought some cold cereal. I bought milk for the first time in, good gravy, I don’t know how many years. I’m lactose annoyed, and milk is the worst offender. I can generally tolerate ice cream pretty well. Cheese okay. Sour cream okay, but milk… That usually gets me pretty good.
I guess we’ll see what happens.
Anyway, headed over to my sister’s place on the southwest side of the lake, and I spent the next few hours catching up with my loan nephew left at home, my sister, and my brother-in-law.
Definitely good to be there. They go to bed relatively early, which was nice, because I was tired and I need to get some good rest. I haven’t been getting enough rest.
Funny, though, when I need rest, I generally just end up wasting more time instead of getting rest. 😅
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful for the conversation with my brother. It was a reminder of where I used to be spiritually and how important it is to me to get back to where I was. I know the formula. I just need to discipline.
- I’m grateful for the connections with my cousins that I’ve made this last week.
- I’m grateful to have had an undisturbed night sleep.
- I’m grateful that there was at least a little bit of a breeze when I was in my van this morning on top of the gravel parking lot that I was in.
- Ungrateful to have the opportunity to choose kindness and patience and love.
- I’m grateful for God’s patience, grateful that that’s who he is. I wish I were more patient with myself, but I’m getting better.
- I’m grateful that though spiritually I feel very far away from where I was in my revelatory years, I know and can feel that I’m not very far away from being able to get there again.
Success:
- I did really freaking well today with not messing with my phone while driving. 🥳 The big guy gave me a heads up on what would happen if I kept doing that while driving, and that’s helped me stay focused.
Improvement:
- I let some judgmental comments fly out of my mouth today during a conversation. There was no reason to have said what I said except it was just making conversation / joking around, but it stung my heart a little bit to hear myself say what I said. Don’t know if anyone noticed or cared, but it’s important to me to have kindness be what comes out of my mouth at all times and never ugliness, even if it’s comedic in tone.
Loves to all y’all. 😊
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 