(written on the 4th from notes)
Today started out with the same light as yesterday, and the light only increased. 🥳
I did my morning routine stuff, and then had a wonderful gospel back and forth with Richard via text. Well… it was pretty much mostly me sharing, but was still wonderful on my end. You’ll have to ask Richard if it was wonderful on his. 🙃
I was really excited, not just because of the subject matter, but also because there’s a particular concept that I’ve been trying to put words to for nearly 2 years? 3 years?
And I guess that’s a little misleading, as I first started trying to find vocabulary to describe the concept back then, but given that I’ve been mostly walking in my own darkness for a lot of that time since, I can’t really say that I’ve been looking for it this whole time.
It would be more accurate to say that I started looking for it way back then, wrestled for a good little while trying to come up with words to describe the concept, had my mom share the perfect words as we were both wrestling to try and come up with accurate and succinct terminology, only to have both of us forget what she came up with that seems to work so well.
But today, words popped into my brain that feel like they fit! 😁 I don’t know if they’re the same words that my mom had pop into her brain back then, but I think they’re going to work wonderfully. 😊 So I’m excited about them! It makes conversing about the subject so much easier, and it makes the application of the concept in my daily life easier as well.
Ironically, ‘easier’ probably isn’t the best term. There’s got to be a better one, but that’s going to do for now. 🙃
Anyway, it’s pretty common in religious vernacular, at least in the LDS faith, and I think in others as well? to label the “good” things that we experience as blessings and the “bad” things as trials.
But that’s not… at least in my personal perspective, accurate to the reality of things. Personally, I feel like everything is a blessing. From my perspective, I chose to come down to this earth to experience the depth and breadth of what mortality has to offer–from the worst pains and sorrows to the greatest joys and exhilarations, and everything between–so I could learn humility, patience, trust, understanding, empathy, love… etc.
And every experience comes packed full of opportunity for me to learn and grow in so many different ways so that I can receive, both along the way and in the end, what I hope to receive, which all of the above and more, each to it’s highest possibility/potential!
(A lot more could be said there to properly fill out the sentiment, but that’s enough to illustrate my perspective, I think.)
Everything is a blessing.
And when we describe the wonderful things as blessings, and the challenging things as trials, I think we miss the mark.
Financial windfall? Blessing.
Financial ruin? Blessing.
Cancer remission? Blessing.
Cancer returning? Blessing.
Everything is a blessing because everything gives us opportunity to become what we came here to become.
To me, and these are the words that came to mind this morning, it’s that we have comfortable blessings, and uncomfortable blessings.
Some blessings are easy to receive, maybe they bring relief, comfort, excitement, exhilaration, joy, etc; and some are challenging to receive, bringing in the beginning, perhaps, sorrow, pain, suffering, stress, struggle, etc.
But all of them, all of them are blessings. They all minister to our growth and learning.
Some are comfortable, and some are uncomfortable.
And as I’ve been learning through first-hand experience, even the uncomfortable blessings can be swallowed up by Joy when my perspective is eternal, with faith and trust in God and the great purpose and opportunity of life.
Anyway, I hope that didn’t come across as a soapbox. It’s exciting for me to finally have verbiage, after having spent a fair amount of time in the past and a little in the present trying to find words to adequately and accurately describe the reality of things.
There might be better words still, but these are sufficient for me right now, and I’m grateful, because now I can just look at the things that are happening around me and with those words, quickly shift perspective for myself (and for anyone else interested in a hopefully constructive reframe of experience).
Had a great little chat with the Big Guy after all that, and then I proceeded to spend the next several hours working online while simultaneously working on my solar panel setup.
I had things go sideways (uncomfortable, sideways blessings 🙃) in little ways along the way, just little mini obstacles and potential irritations and such, but I powered through them really well! (Much to my excitement)
Chatted with Corey a little bit while he was working to finish fixing his van.
Continued working online and on my solar project, getting it to the point where I had added four extra bolt holes to each solar panel, because I didn’t feel comfortable leaving only the original for bolt holes that would end up being under the parts most exposed to wind lift. So I drilled two holes on each end of each panel. I ended up having to lengthen the holes into fairly long grooves in order to fit the longer bolts between the small space of the solar reception surface itself and the bracket, and I ended up having to remove a panel at least once because the bolts on the ends that I thought would be long enough, weren’t, so I had to redrill the slots longer, and then put in the longer bolts on the ends as well as on the sides.
In the end, I got all the bolt slots drilled, painted to resist corrosion, all the bolts slotted in their places, four of them on each bolted snugly in their places, and for to dangle through to be tightened from the bottom.
I got both solar panels installed on the roof, six of the eight fasteners fully seated and tightened on one of them, and five of them fully seated and tightened on the other–not completing seating and tightening all eight on each both because of a lack of hardware and also because I couldn’t reach two of the bolts on the front end of the front panel because they were so far away from my access point that I needed arms about 8 in longer to reach the bolts hanging down through the fiberglass roof.
But I figured the six in the one and the five in the other would be sufficient, even if not optimal, as that was more than the original number of mounting bolts in the beginning (though I don’t know if the original four bolt holes were designed to manage 80+ mile an hour winds while driving down the freeway.)
When Hans got back from work, he helped me figure out a way to get the final two bolts installed. We devised a plan where we stuck the nut and washers and everything all together with gasket maker, so they wouldn’t fall off while extending my powered ratchet across the gap between my headliner and the roof. Then I crawled on top of the van and used a putty knife to hold the bolts in place so they didn’t spin along with the nut as he used my powered ratchet to reach the distance and then to thread it on.
I don’t know what kind of masterful strategy he had to not cross thread the nut as it went on, but he didn’t cross thread either one of them!
And it worked! 🥳
I finished putting on the rest of the bolts with the nuts that he gave me, so now I have each solar panel fastened down at eight points. 🙏
I did end up breathing in a whole bunch of fiberglass dust/fibers, making my chest hurt a little bit. I guess we’ll see what happens from here with that. 🙃😅
Wonder how the body gets rid of glass… During the job, I found shards of fiberglass that had gone all the way through my skin maybe 1/2 or 3/4 inch long and out the other side of my knuckles. 🙃
Makes me wonder what’s happening inside my lungs right now. 😅
Oh well. It will be what it will be. Lesson learned.
Headed inside and spent the rest of the night inside chatting and joking with Heather and Hans and answering some questions here and there for work.
Heather made dinner again, and it was fabulous. 🤤
Before bed, I borrowed their Shop-Vac and vacuumed as much of the plexiglass leftovers off of my bed as I could. Not having trouble breathing right now, not much, anyway, just a little bit of pain in my chest.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful to have had such a wonderfully bright morning, full of light and the spirit and everything. So nice. 🥰🙏
- I’m grateful for hans’s help, in the middle of everything that he’s trying to do with the house, helping me get my solar panels set up so that I’m better prepared to be self-sufficient.
- I’m grateful to have been able to withstand all the little sideways directionals in the process of trying to get the solar panels on the roof. When circumstances arose that could have been annoying or frustrating, I just let them go. I’m grateful for that strength.
- I’m grateful that the uplifting music on the library app is more geared towards listenability now and less like mechanical, functional information on what a song sounds like. It’s got feeling to it now. 🥰
- I’m grateful for the vocabulary that popped into my brain today with ‘comfortable and uncomfortable blessings.’ 🎉
Success:
- I’m doing really well right now at choosing to do the things that I know are best for me and my mental, emotional, and spiritual health. I’m making a lot of really good progress in all of those areas, and the dividends are paying off beautifully right now. All gratitude to Big Pops. 🙏🥰
Improvement:
- Gosh… It feels so arrogant on days like this. But I just… I’m making good decisions. 😊I’m choosing good thoughts. I’m making the choices that will get me what I want most, not what I want now. So there’s… Not much that comes to mind to have done better. Maybe I could have spent some dedicated time reaching out to doctors to get medical records transferred where they need to go and appointments started. That’s something.
My love to all y’all. 🥰
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 