(Written on the 30th from notes taken previously)
I don’t remember what time I got up or really much of anything that I did this morning. 😆
I think I worked on my journal a bit?
Once Richard was able to pull away from work (about lunch time), I hung out with him for a little while, mostly talking about the different projects he’s working on with his job.
Gratefully, I did remember to snap the obligatory selfie before bidding him farewell until the next time I’m in Utah. 🙏
My next stop was to meet up with my friend Chris and his wife Jodi, but not until about 4:30, so I headed over to the Walmart neighborhood market that’s closest to my brother’s place just to kill time.
As I sat there in my van, I worked on my journal a little bit, and then my sister Heather called, so I chatted with her for a bit. While I was chatting with my sister, I watched a young mother with her baby loading groceries in her truck. As she loaded the groceries, her receipt fell to the ground and then blew underneath her truck. I watched her bend over to see if she could see where the receipt was, but she couldn’t find it at first.
I wondered if she would just leave it or keep looking.
After she finally got everything loaded and her baby secured, she found the receipt, stuck behind her front driver’s wheel, and knelt down to pick it up.
🥰
Yay!
I had been planning, should she have made the additional effort to find and retrieve the receipt, to walk over and thank her for her conscientiousness (as you’re well aware by now, trash strewn about, whether in the city or the country, is a big downer for me), so I was already poised to hop out of my van, and when she did pick up her fallen receipt, I quickly paused my conversation with my sister, walked over to the young woman, and thanked her for being the kind of person that makes the world a better place. 🙏
I think she was a little surprised, but I hope my acknowledgment of her efforts was meaningful to her. 😊
I spent something like three hours visiting Chris and Jodi, Chris and I reminiscing about our trip to havasupai nearly a couple of decades ago at this point.
We talked a little bit about my New Zealand trip, a little bit about what’s been going on with them , and I ended up sharing much of what’s been going on with me, without any specific details, for the last 17 years (specifically, the experiences that have been so challenging for me).
I found out at their small, family and close friends get together after their wedding three years ago that I’m actually related to both of them: Jodi is a direct fourth cousin on my mom’s side, and Chris is a direct 10th cousin on my dad’s side.
The topic came up back then, because I recognized her last name as being an uncommon last name that was the same as one of my ancestors. Jodi suggested we use the Family Tree app’s little tool to find people near you who are family members, and lo and behold there she was!
But I forgot exactly where our ancestral lineage joins together in a common direct ancestor, so we checked again while I was there.
Fun stuff. 😊
Gratefully, I remembered the obligatory selfie again. 😁
I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it or not, but I’ve been corresponding with somebody on Facebook Marketplace about some shoes they’ve got for sale, brand new ones. The sellers live in South Jordan, which is where Chris and Jodi live, and hoping to possibly connect with them to buy the shoes before I left, I pulled into a gas station parking lot and just sat there for a little while before eventually giving up and heading to Cory’s mom’s place.
My nerve issues were acting up pretty significantly, so Cory and I walked around the neighborhood for a good little while and then chatted on the back porch for a bit as well, before I crawled into my van, ate dinner, journaled a bit, and called it a night.
It’s pretty incredible to me that the switch that flipped that last Sunday in New Zealand is still flipped. I haven’t felt the need to just disappear and escape like I had for the last several months before that.
I’m grateful. 🙏
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 