(written on the 23rd, 25th, 28th, and 29th 😆)
I think it finally dawned on me today that for perhaps most of the last several years, for whatever reason, I have approached my relationship with God and spiritual things from the attitude that in order to be intellectually honest, and in order to have a truly solid foundation, I have to explore and come to terms with every counter argument to God and truth as I have understood, believed, and experienced them.
But today, with that realization, I ask myself: Which is more intellectually honest, to continually doubt the spiritual experiences I have had and the truths those experiences have taught me, or to trust the experiences I’ve had, build upon them, and see where they lead?
Do I want to be able to have an answer for every critical perspective someone else expresses to counter my beliefs?
Yes, I do.
But it’s so much more important to me to be stripped of every. last. particle. of pride (selfishness) and to have that pride replaced by the pure and perfect love of God.
I want to love like God, and I want to understand like God (understand others’ hearts, specifically).
I don’t know if there’s anything that I want more.
I want that more even than the opportunities I’ve lost and the ones I’m still afraid to lose–yes, those same losses and feared losses that I’ve allowed to be the causes of the overwhelming majority of the debilitating fear and pain that has kept me from being the man I truly want to be.
Yes, even more than those.
I want to love and understand like God more than anything.
So I think I’m gonna try and let go of trying to be aware of and find answers for every question and concern and critique out there. Instead, I think I’m going to strive to be true to the truth that I feel like God has already given me, and I’m going to seek for any and every additional truth He feels I’m ready to receive.
This is going to be much easier written than done. 😅
[deep breath]
In other news, I had trouble sleeping this morning, despite being exhausted. Gratefully, despite my super rough emotional night last night, I managed to overcome it quickly and turned to gospel things first thing this morning–lots of gospel things.
And even with no change with my leg.
🙏
At some point, I decided to hike the familiar trail up Slide Canyon, acutely aware that I was no longer in New Zealand and needed to be on the lookout for rattlesnakes, mountain lions, and bears, etc. 😅
I miss being able to wander the wilderness free of concern for dangerous creatures.
As I hiked, though, there were other, more poignant fears on my mind, fears I’ve been living with on a daily basis even while in New Zealand. Gratefully, in perhaps a continuation of the miraculous strength that somehow appeared seemingly out of nowhere this last Sunday, I was able to do as the people of Alma in the Book of Mormon who “Hushed their fears.”
I felt focused. More steady steady today.
And it was nice. 🙏
Quite the opposite from the cracked psyche of yesterday, and I’m grateful that pain can be so quickly placed in the past.
I didn’t hike very far up, not even to my favorite little water’s fall spot in that particular canyon. I wandered and pondered, stopping where the gigantic boulder, one of perhaps hundreds of boulders, had come to rest following the collapse of a cliff wall above.
I realized that the water filter bottle that I had brought was not the one I had brought with me to New Zealand but the one I had left behind. That in and of itself wasn’t all that important, except that the one I had left behind had dried dirt pushed all the way through the little sucking spout, so I spent a fair bit of time trying to remove the compacted dirt from the flip top of my filter bottle.
Eventually, with the help of the frigid water and a couple of skinny twigs, I managed to clear all the dirt out. I then sucked one water bottle’s worth of water through the spout and spit it back out in an effort to rinse off any residual dirt/mud and clean out any potentially microbe-infested water that remained in the spout after washing it out.
Now I have two fully functional filter bottles, this one perhaps even more useful than the other, as I think this one’s a little bit easier to suck through?
Hopefully that’s a good thing. 😅
I pondered for a little while up there, and I think that was good for me. After hiking back down, I spent a fair bit of time replacing the rear door lock of my back door. I removed the door lock for some reason that I don’t remember… Wait, I think it was because I was trying to fix the broken door cables, and I had to remove the motor to access the cable assembly, and in the process, I accidentally broke one of the retaining knobs on the motor.
Well, I managed to get a motor by cannibalizing Cory’s van before we took it to the metal yard in October last year, so I used that motor, and after fighting with it a fair bit, managed to get it installed and fully functional. So now my power locks lock the rear door as well. 🎉
Being Thursday, I reached out to my brother Jared (his school work week was finished, and so I figured he might be available for a visit). He was in the middle of something important, but invited me to join in with him and Cortney anyway, so I began heading that way.
But thinking about what he needed to do, and the fact that he had a deadline of getting it done by tonight, I figured it would probably be better were I not there as a distraction, so decided to go to Walmart instead.
I think I’d barely made it inside Walmart, when my brother told me to just go ahead and come anyway (he had been busy and hadn’t yet gotten my message saying that I would just come by another time), so I left Walmart and headed over to meet them at the Harmon’s on the Utah County side of the point of the mountain.
Pretty cool place that Harmon’s. I’m not much for grocery shopping there because their prices are significantly higher than the places I normally grocery shop, but Jared and Cortney had discovered that little salad bar station is actually an incredible deal, so you can enjoy an amazingly priced salad bar and don’t ever have to grocery shop at all. 🙃
And the grocery store has a second floor complete with tables for you to sit and enjoy your food or whatever else you want to do.
Pretty cool. 🙂
I chatted with them for a little while there at Harmons, and then we relocated to their house and continued chatting and working on the time-sensitive project they needed to complete.
After hanging out there for a good little while, I headed out in order to make it back to Walmart before it closed, heading to the Supercenter in Pleasant Grove.
First, though since I was already driving by the little park at the base of American Fork Canyon, I decided I would just pop in to see what everything looked like, as the last time I was there, you probably remember, they were building the diversion dam just a tad upstream from the park, and the section of the river that ran through the park was dry, no flow at all.
Well, either it was their plan all along to restore flow through that park, or they changed their mind and so. Either way, I was happy to find the little river running through a park that will always have a special place in my heart.
As I was checking out at the self-service checkout stations, I noticed that the attendant in charge of assisting customers, a young lady, probably late teens or early 20 something, was crying.
I watched her walk over to one side of the stations and then come back, and it was clear that she was really hurting.
I walked over to her and put my hand on her shoulder. I don’t remember exactly what I said to her. Apparently, she had set her water bottle down on an end cap or one of the payment stations, I don’t remember exactly, a water bottle that I believe was a gift and that also had a handmade keepsake of hers attached to it. I hope I’m remembering that all correctly. Anyway, someone had taken it, and though I think she felt like it was stupid to feel so, she was devastated by the loss.
I wished there was something I could do. The only thing I could think of was to check the security cameras, and she said that her co-workers were in the process of checking them.
As I walked out of the store, I looked around, my eyes scanning the parking lot on the way back to my van in the hopes that maybe whoever took it had discarded it as quickly as they had taken it, but no, not that I could see.
I really hope she finds the water bottle and the keepsake that’s attached to it. 🤍
I drove from the Pleasant Grove Walmart Supercenter to the Maverick gas station on 8th North in Orem by Macey’s, the same place I’d stopped at last night to get gas and figure out my misfiring issue.
That Maverick has become one of my go-to overnight parking spots.
The 24-hour Maverick Adventure Stops, in general, have become more trusted places to stay the night.
Thx, Maverick. 🙏
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Oh! I accidentally posted for Tuesday something that happened today. It was today that I put an ad up on Facebook to try and sell my New Zealand and Fijian dollars.
Lift the World 