I’m… happy. 😊
I don’t just mean I had fun today, or today was a good day, etc.
I’m happy. Soul-deep happy.
🥰
I guess the honeymoon isn’t over. 😊
🥳
The day started off really well. 🎉 I played one of my favorite songs from the “songs of praise” section of the LDS Library app (For the Beauty of the Earth).
That brought a smile to my face first thing. 😊
I think I’m going to start every morning off with an uplifting song. I just… love it. 😊
I chatted with Mr. Big Shot for a good little while. I think I looked up and recorded myself reading something Orson F. Whitney wrote many many moons ago:
“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.”
I think I’m going to memorize that one. 🙂
Spent some time digging through one of my bins to find a book that my dad wrote and gave me a copy of a while back. For some reason, I’ve had it pop into my head again and again, so I figured I’d open it up and give it a read. I read the introduction and part of the first chapter this morning.
My Aunt Cynthia came out somewhere around 8:30 or 9:00 ish this morning, opening up the garage door, and inviting me in the house for breakfast if I wanted to join her, which I happily did. 😊
I love family. 😊
This trip has been such a wonderful trip. 🥰
Er… this new lifestyle? 🙃
#Vanlife 🚐
I love how perfect that little van emoji is for what I’m actually driving. 😆
Anyway, ate breakfast with my aunt and uncle, chatted for a good little while this morning about mostly uplifting things, gospel stuff, spiritual experiences, lots of wonderful stuff.
We went over to where Jimmy lives and picked him up and all went out to lunch, my aunt and uncle taking me out yet again–wonderful people. 😊
It was great to see Jimmy. He’s still the same Jimmy he was when I first met him decades ago. There’s definitely something that can be learned from those who may have mental handicaps, but are just so incredibly filled with love and happiness.
Anyway, had a great lunch with them, and then we dropped Jimmy off back at his place and headed over to visit my cousin Jenny. I don’t think I’ve seen Jenny and maybe 15 years? I honestly don’t know how long. It’s probably been since a Thanksgiving at my Uncle John and Aunt Cynthia’s house in Smithfield, Utah, many many years ago.
Was really great to see her. Made immediate friends with her little 4-year-old daughter and had a blast playing with her.
I love kids. 😊 I’ve always loved kids.
Maybe I can still have some of my own some day.
I also made friends with the family dog. 😆 I love animals, too. 🙃
After hanging out at Jenny’s house for a little while, we headed back to Uncle John and Aunt Cynthia’s house, where I helped them get their surround sound system figured out. The Bluetooth on the speakers wasn’t connecting, so the only thing that was playing was the audio bar in the front right below the tv, any instructions were… Pretty much non-existent, so it took a little while, but we eventually got it. 🥳
Bid my aunt and uncle goodbye after having had such a beautiful little visit with them. 🥰
And then I headed back down south on I-5, so I can head back West toward the ocean at the same place that I headed east, so as not to miss any of the Pacific Coast Highway going north. 🙃
Stopped off and got gas at the cheapest station nearby. My gas mileage hasn’t been so great, but then again, I’ve been doing a lot of winding through the mountains and hills and lots of starting and stopping, so I can get some questions for work.
I chatted with my brother Richard on the phone for most of the drive from Eugene area back to the coast–from interstate 5 South to State Highway 38 West, I think it was.
Headed north along the PCH, enjoying the view of the ocean again. For some reason, the ocean felt more welcoming this time that it has any of the visits I’ve had on this trip so far. 😊
I chatted with my friend Cory for a bit while I was driving, and then stopped off in an area where there was a little colony of sea lions.
Yay!!! 🎉
So fun.
While I was chatting with Cory, a wonderful gray haired lady from Alaska walked up, interested to see if she could see some of the sea lions, we way up the cliff from the ocean and sea lions below, and so I paused my conversation with Cory and walked over to the other side of the overlook to point out where I had seen some sea lions, and gratefully, there were some more right there for her to see. 🥳
Really nice lady. I wish I had stayed to talk to her a little bit more, but I was in the midst of an important conversation with Cory, so after some brief small talk, I excuse myself to continue my chat.
Would really like to run into her again, though. 🤞
Mary-Lou, from 40ish miles north of Anchorage. 🙂
Kept chatting with Cory for a while until I lost reception when I pulled into the next overlook.
Spent a little while at that overlook, first chatting with Cory until I lost signal. Then I chatted with younger woman, in her 20s, who is sitting on the Stonewall steering off into the ocean below while writing in her journal.
Ended up chatting with her for maybe 15 minutes, she showing me a little route down below the rock wall to the edge of the cliff to look down, a little more private from just the pull-out area on the side of the road.
Would have loved to have stayed and chatted with her a good bit more as well, but she had to go back to Eugene because she had to get up at 5:00 in the morning for work, and it’s an hour and a half, or so, drive from where we were to back home for her.
Alysia, was her name, interestingly from Utah, right near where I used to live before I headed out to Arkansas.
Didn’t think about it until after she left, but there’s something that I want to tell her after the conversation we had, but I didn’t get any contact information or anything. Maybe I can find her on Facebook.
🤞
From there, I headed north up the coast to a little State Park Beach parking lot, parked Rover, and headed through what I think was a massive Grove of rhododendrons? Pads carved through the Grove from the parking lot down to the beach.
The sun was already basically down at this point, though there was still probably an hour to an hour and a half worth of light left before complete darkness fell, and I had the beach all to myself.
And I took advantage. 🙃
I walked out to the water, took my shoes off, stashing them just a little bit further up the beach, so they wouldn’t get washed away, and then started wading out into the cold Pacific water.
I had my headphones on, so I flipped on the songs of praise playlist from the LDS library app and just started listening to the uplifting music.
And I just started smiling. And smiling. And smiling some more. 😁
And I started just thanking Heavenly Father.
And I just kept smiling and was just so…. happy. Soul-deep, happy. I started singing the songs to myself, some of them regular hymns, some of them primary songs, all of them sort of adapted to a more energetic, gospelly vibe?
I saying, and then I even just started dancing barefoot on the beach in the water.
And I danced and danced and danced and just smiled and saying and smiled and saying and gave thanks to my wonderful Heavenly Father, and just felt so full of joy and light and happiness.
🥳🙏🥰🙏🥳
It was amazing. 🥰
And I’m still smiling as I write this journal entry. My heart is filling up to full, and even my spine issues can’t hold this back–in fact, unless it’s just the mountain of endorphins that flooded my system, that bit of dancing on the beach might have actually improved the severity of recent exacerbation of my spinal symptoms.
🤞
What a beautiful day. 🥰
I didn’t wander away from the beach until it was dark, and I needed a flashlight just to get off the beach and make my way through the rhododendron maze back to the parking lot.
From there, I headed north, hoping to find a place to sleep in the national Forest that I was heading into, and I did Head East off of the PCH into The national forest, but after maybe two or three miles of heading up the national forest, I was still running into residential houses here and there off the gravel Road, so I turned around and decided to just go to the place that I found on freecampsites.net., which is where I now am. 🙂
And in the morning when I wake up, I’ll have the opportunity to walk down to something called the spouting horn, which I guess is a hole in the rock where water shoots up as the waves come in, like a blowhole from a whale.
Not sure how dependent it is on the tides, as I imagine it probably is, but we’ll see how it is in the morning, and we’ll be grateful for whatever experience I am privileged to enjoy when morning rolls around, and I’m able to go take a look safely.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful to have been able to start the day off on such a positive note that just carried through the whole day.
- I’m grateful to have been able to spend some really enjoyable time with my aunt and uncle and cousins. What a beautiful day. 🥰
- I’m grateful to have been able to help my aunt and uncle figure out the home theater speaker system that had to that point eluded proper function.
- I’m grateful for the meaningful spiritual conversations that I had with my Oregon family.
- I’m grateful for my friend Cory, for being able to talk to him so regularly about things that are so important and uplifting for both of us.
- I’m grateful do you have this love in my heart just building and building. So grateful to be able to share that love with everyone I come in contact with. It was just such a great day today. Being able to give my love to family, to strangers I meet, to friends. So beautiful. Such a wonderful opportunity. The realization of simple but profoundly deep desires.
- I’m grateful to have had the little duh aha moment today, where knowledge from my head finally clicked in my heart and mind at the same time, and I recognized how frequently, when I slip in an area that I’m trying to improve in, such as not texting or internet surfing while driving, I have often, in fact most of the time I think, just sort of looked the day as having been a lost day, and I’d try again tomorrow. I’ve known that’s not how it works, but today is the first day that I can recall, ever, that it finally clicked in my heart, and it was like, yeah I just screwed up, but that’s okay, I’ll have another opportunity probably just minutes from now, and I can succeed that time. So simple. Such a duh moment, and yet incredibly impactful. 🙏
- I’m also grateful for this fun little insight that isn’t anything new except in the verbiage that’s kind of fun. Cory and I were talking about YouTube videos, and how sometimes we watch YouTube videos that are not really uplifting. They might not be negative in any way, but there aren’t the kinds of videos that truly fill our souls. As we were talking about it, the thought popped into my brain that we can just trade in our terrestrial media choices for celestial media–a free upgrade! 🙃 How often in life do we get to trade in what we have for a better model and have it be absolutely free? Free upgrade. 😁 Again, nothing new, but the verbiage was kind of fun. 🙃
- Oh, and one more! Today, this incredible depth of happiness, This Joy. I’m lonely. I’ve been lonely. I’ve been visiting family, and I’m still lonely. And yet, despite the loneliness, despite being in the very middle of it, this great gift of happiness just washes over me. I long for a companion, but even in that longing, I have exquisite joy. And I am very very very grateful. 🥰
Success:
- I think it’s mostly a gift, but to be filled with happiness today, deep… Profound, real happiness. Joy. It’s just wonderful. And maybe giving thanks for even my health issues has allowed my heart to open up enough to receive this wonderful gift of joy that I am privileged and grateful to receive right now.
Improvement:
- And I’ll call this one both success and improvement at the same time. I had that little aha today, or maybe it was yesterday? I don’t remember exactly when, but that aha that it doesn’t have to have ruined the day’s efforts, and I’ll start again tomorrow, no, I’ll start again right now! So I wasn’t as good as I could have been today with my driving, and so there’s room for improvement, but I also did improve, so… 🥳
Loves and hugs. 🥰
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 