Alohar!🌮 🌺🌮
Happy Sabbath. 😊
It’s been a lovely day today. 🥰
I mean, every day is a good day: It’s just good in different ways, but today was more of a comfortable blessing day as opposed to an uncomfortable blessing day. 🙃
I got personal best scores on all three of my Elevate app brain exerciser games. I had a good little chat with the Big Guy.
I spent nearly an hour and a half, I think, going through and organizing my written records of the more profound spiritual experiences and communications with God that I’ve had.
Some of the ones I went through today I think are ones that I haven’t gone back through since… maybe July 2nd of 2020? I hadn’t read through them in so long that I had completely forgotten about them.
Amazing how easy it can be to forget something so important.
I was super exhausted, so I decided to take a nap, sleeping all the way until not too long before I needed to get up and get ready for church.
I don’t remember if the dream was during the night or during the nap, but I had this very real dream about a girl I had a crush on in junior high who, unfortunately, ended up being on the receiving end of my voyeurism tendencies.
I went back and apologized to her I think when I was 18 and had graduated from school and was back living with my mom, but I don’t think I ever really felt like my apology was good enough? But she’s married with kids now… And so I don’t remember the dream really at all anymore, I think there was something in the dream that was basically giving me the opportunity to have a meaningful conversation with her…
Anyway… since I had my bath last night, I didn’t need to head over to Cascade Falls this morning, though that would have been lovely as well. 🙃
Funny that I ended up being just as late today as I usually am, even though I didn’t need to go take a bath. I walked in I think maybe one or two minutes late, and then thought about the fact that I was looking a little scraggly on the beard front, so I ran back out and at least shaved a line in the beard to look… how I wanted to look.
It’s good to be at church. One of the members made a little joke that he hadn’t yet heard my name read in as a new member of the branch, giving me a little gentle ribbing and encouragement to move into the branch.
Good people here. 😊
After church, I spent a little time trying to help one of the members (who recently received her endowment) with her car that’s been having issues. It’s been hard starting, so I checked a few things out for her in the parking lot after church, but I wasn’t able, in the brief time that I was there, to come up with a solid diagnosis–just a recommendation that she changed her distributor cap and rotor, as she had had her spark plugs and wires replaced, but not the cap and rotor, which should have been done at the same time.
Anyway, Hans helped me a little bit with that, and then we both went over to the VA hospital to bring the sacrament to the brother who had a stroke. We also visited another gentleman who’s suffering from a bit of dementia / Alzheimer’s.
Sobering to see people at the end of their lives in such challenging circumstances.
After church, I chatted with Corey for a good little while, maybe close to 2 hours?
It was an absolutely beautiful, spiritually uplifting conversation with new insights and perspectives and just… 🥰.
I am grateful to have him as a friend, to be walking this journey of life with such a wonderful friend. Our friendship means so much to me.
I was migraining a little bit, and I have been on and off today, after a couple of days in a row of physical exhaustion, lack of nutrition, and lack of sleep. 🙃
Took a couple of migraine pills, ate some cold cereal for lunch, hung out with my sister a little bit while we let the horses, one by one, graze on the grass on just the other side of the fence from where they are.
Spent a good little while trying to get the doggles (doggy goggles 🙃) figured out for Zora. Being blind, but wanting to explore nonetheless, she tends to bang her eyes on things and regularly has an irritated weeping eye, so we’ve tried four different kinds of doggy goggles, and the last one might work. 🤞
The straps that they’ve used to design it are terrible, but… The actual fit of the goggles themselves is better than any of the other ones. It’s hard because her eyes are so close to the level of her muzzle that most of the doggy goggles sit too high and end up just pushing against her eyes, I think.
Anyway, because of how poorly designed the straps were, it took me probably 20 or 30 minutes to figure out an adjustment that at least was going to mostly work.
Funny that the goggles that were the most effective were the most challenging to deal with. 😆
Too bad I can’t just mix and match the good parts for me to design.
Maybe I can… 🤔
Spend some time chatting with Heather and Hans for a little while, waiting for an opportunity to do something that I’ve been planning for a good little while. While my sister and brother-in-law were doing things away from the main area of the trailer, I swapped out their three regular LED light bulbs with three Bluetooth color changing light bulbs that you can control with an app.
Somewhere around 8:00, I started messing with the settings without telling them that I changed their light bulbs, starting to dim the lights and change the color from a brighter 5000k light down to a more mellow 2700k light, and much dimmer.
I don’t remember the exact order of things, but then I changed colors, making the light green or blue or something like that. I forget.
Fun stuff. 🙃
Spent a good little while chatting with someone well into the night instead of getting to bed on time, but it was an important conversation to have with the person that I had had that challenging conversation with last week. Good stuff. Very good stuff.
After that, I spent a good little while going back over some old Facebook conversations with a friend I haven’t talked to in years now.
Thoughts… emotions…
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful to be able to see where I fall short. I think that’s one of the beautiful things from God: God gives us the gift of helping us see where we can improve. Satan then tries to tell us how bad we are because we’re not where we want to be. But God, He’s just encouraging; and seeing where I fall short can be exciting because if I can have the level of peace and happiness that I feel now, then how much more amazing will it be when my heart has been fully transformed into pure love and light. Having a long ways to go means that I also have that much more brilliant light and happiness and joy and love to receive waiting for me on the horizon.
- I’m grateful for my conversation with Cory and for his recording at least the latter part of it. We used to record our spiritual discussions because we learned so much from them. But Google stopped allowing phone recording apps in the Play store, and they don’t provide that opportunity on their own software platform, so having a Google phone, I’m unable to record phone calls like I used to. Fortunately, I think Samsung users are able to, having that as an option on the phone software itself, outside of the Google ecosystem.
- I’m grateful to feel so much lighter and freer than I’ve been in so many years. I used to be the comic of the group with my friends on a fairly regular basis, coming up with funny things that would make everyone laugh. And I’m starting to be that way again, and I’m grateful. I used to play a role in my family. I was the serious one. Richard was the comedian. So when I was with my family members, I just sort of settled into my role. Gratefully, I don’t play roles anymore.
- I’m grateful to be able to serve other people and to try to lift and encourage.
- I’m grateful to be able to have God teaching me so much and giving me so much strength. Though I continually fall short, I still see the possibility of becoming who I truly want to be closer on the horizon than it’s ever been for me before, and now, for the first time in years, I’m grateful to be experiencing joy in the journey. 🥰
Success:
- Hmmm… I don’t know that I really feel like there’s a success to mention today. I guess maybe following the prompting to reach out to the person that I had the rough conversation with last week. He went beautifully. The conversation was rough mostly because of my own pride, choosing to take offense where no offense was intended, etc.
Improvement:
- I need to get more sleep. I’m reminded of something that Elder Maxwell said some years back, that he hadn’t been doing things in wisdom and order, and there was a day where he went to give blessings to three different people who were dying, and he was exhausted, so the last person didn’t get much from him. That’s how I felt today at the VA hospital. I was exhausted, and there was a part of me that really didn’t want to be there, and so they didn’t get what they could have gotten from me had I been better at getting the rest I need, among other things.
Loves
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 