Tired. Ready to sleep.
Do I have the mental strength to write my post tonight?
…
Well, it’s now the 4th, so apparently I didn’t. 😅
Good day yesterday. 😊
Slept in a little bit, did some gospel study, ate breakfast, having milk for the first time in… gosh… I don’t know how many years.
Spent pretty much all day from the time my sister and brother-in-law got back from the bank in the later morning just sitting around the house talking and laughing and just… being together. It was really great. 😊
Sometime in the early evening, my nephew and I headed out to go find some food, playing the restaurant game that I invented on my mission and ending up in Lakeport at a little cafe. 😊
We sat and talked for a good long while, talking about life, politics, all sorts of stuff. It was great to be able to share differing political and societal views and be totally respectful.
That’s… what I hope for the whole world.
After coming back to my sister’s place, we just sat around and kept talking. 🙃
Really good day today just being with family. 😊
I think one of the conversations was more than I was ready for, which was just talking about favorite movies and TV and whatnot, but I’ve used those as a drug for so long that I think the neutral pathways are well established that makes it so easy to just dive right back in, but doing so pretty much universally reduces my ability to feel the fullness of the Spirit, and does so, so dramatically that… wow, I can just slide.
And I did last night after I went out to Rover. I slid so far I almost relapsed. I started watching movie clips on YouTube, and then I started getting into that space where I’m trying to “accidentally” come across porn (put in the name of an actress in Google images search and just search the name, or sometimes the name with a movie that I know contains a nude scene with her in it). Of course there’s nothing accidental about it, but there’s that ridiculous illusion… When I’m in that space, I don’t just want to dive Right into porn… I sort of ease my way into it.
Fortunately, I had safe search set on to protect against that kind of stuff, and fortunately, I had the self-discipline to not turn it off but to walk away.
It’s a very rare moment indeed when I can walk away after starting down that path.
After that, I didn’t walk back into my preferred path, which would have been back to a focus on gospel things: I ended up watching most of a movie (the tomorrow war).
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful to have been able to spend the day talking with my sister and nephew.
- I’m grateful to have been able to take my nephew out for dinner.
- I’m grateful but I thought to reach out to some of my friends whom I taught on my mission.
- I’m grateful to have been blessed to be safe in my travels thus far.
- I’m grateful to be able to buy what I need when I need it.
Success:
- Don’t know if this counts because and gratitude and glory goes to God, but I am just noticing how much softer, gentler, and more patient I’ve been since finally deciding to turn back to God and let go of my anger. I’m tremendously grateful for the changes in my heart.
Improvement:
- I want to be better at listening to differing opinions without feeling a desire to share my own perspective. I think I’m fairly decent at that, but I’d like to be better, so I can just listen and not think about what I might say in response to support or defend my own perspective.
I love you!
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 