(written on the 12th from notes taken previously)
Howdy folks. Today has been… light and… dark.
I added a lot to yesterday’s post that I didn’t already have there, and today has been a day of refreshing light and heavy darkness.
As usual for a Sunday, I headed over relatively early and took a bath in Cascade Springs. Someone has moved the main barrier to my soaking pool, and taken a fair bit of time doing it.
I’ve probably mentioned that already.
It’s a little discouraging, but it’s fine.
It was fast Sunday, and so it was testimony meeting that, and that was nice. Between that and Sunday school, there was some lovely spiritual light.
Chatting with one of the members of the branch who’s going through really hard times right now. I think he sees life so much like I do, the giving of ourselves completely over to God as He guides us through the journey of reaching our greatest hopes and dreams.
We were late to Sunday school because we spent so much time talking after sacrament meeting, and it was kind of fun to walk into Sunday School and have the first thing he heard be a question something to the effect of what does it look like to put our all on the altar.
I might be misremembering exactly what it was, but whatever it was, it was pretty much exactly what he and I had just barely been talking about.
After church, I drove over to Cascade Springs.
Somehow, a dark and heavy cloud parked itself above me, and for probably the next 10 hours, I doom scrolled YouTube.
It was awful.
I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t.
The inner turmoil was enormous.
I stayed so long that Hans came looking for me because I had been MIA and had responded to messages.
So dark.
So weird.
I stayed for a little bit longer after he left before heading back myself and crashing for the night.
Gratitude to My Father:
- I’m grateful to have felt the Spirit multiple times today, both in talking to the member of the branch and I’m sharing a very important spiritual experience I had many years ago about my own attitude toward God.
Reflections on Where I Can Improve:
- I’m going to be gentle with myself. It was an awful last two thirds of the day, stuck in a spiral of darkness, unable to extricate myself. I certainly could and would like to have not doom scrolled at all, let alone for 10 agonizing hours, and I’ll mention it as a clear area of growth, but I’m not going to think any more about it today.
I know this thought is a repeat, but here it is again:
Thought of the Day:
The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives.
~ Jeffrey R. Holland
Hand of God In My Life Today:
Grateful to feel the Spirit and the light, despite the heavy darkness that came so quickly after church.
Onward.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 