I’m tired, and I’m not wanting to write, but I am wanting to reclaim my discipline, so here we go.
My phone’s got 14% charge, so let’s see if I can finish this before it runs out of juice. 🙃
I was up pretty early this morning, I think. I might be getting my mornings mixed up, but I want to say that I started waking up sometime in the late 4:00 hour?
It’s already pretty light outside by that point here.
I think I finally got up for good somewhere inside the 6:00 or 7:00 hour?
Gosh, I don’t remember.
I also don’t remember if I mentioned in my post last night that right before going to bed, I noticed that the talk I was scheduled to give a lesson on for elders quorum tomorrow was swapped to a completely different talk, which was fine, I can roll with it, but I didn’t know if it was because they wanted to make the change last minute or if something else had happened.
Wanting to get clarification, I sent out a message to the member of the presidency who had asked me to prepare the lesson, but I didn’t hear back from him right away (looks like I sent the message at 7:12 this morning, so that’s probably why 😅).
Not knowing which talk to prepare on, I ended up going through both, which probably wasn’t a bad thing 🙃, before hearing back a little before 9:00 to just go ahead with the talk I had originally been asked to teach on.
For a fair chunk of the morning, I sat on the ground at the South end of the property working on lesson prep while letting the horses out to munch on some fresh grass.
No JH Keith park for me this morning, and needing to prepare for my lesson, I didn’t end up going to the Southern Hills Evangelical Free Church I had considered visiting this week (one of the few local congregations that meets at an hour that would allow me to attend both their congregation and my own).
Sacrament meeting today was… really good. 🤍 We’ve got a couple of members of the branch who are also Native American, and one of the speakers today is an older gentleman of the Lakota tribe, and he talked a bit about his life growing up and his experiences as well as the opportunity that he has now share about the traditions and practices of his people with others.
Super cool. Great message, and perhaps the most-powerful, two-sentence testimony I’ve ever heard to cap it off at the end.
His wife’s talk was quite short, but equally powerful.
Great stuff. 🤍🙏🤍
I was a bit nervous to teach elders quorum. I haven’t taught much of anything in a long long time. Combine my lack of practice and the short notice, and I didn’t feel all that prepared, but the Spirit was there, and I am grateful. 🙏
Both after sacrament meeting and after elder’s quorum, I chatted with a gentleman from North Carolina who had been on the road for I think two or three months already, getting ready to pick up their daughter in a month after her graduation from University.
They’ve spent the last month or so in South Dakota and have absolutely loved it, mentioning they’d even done a little looking for property here.
Great chatting with the brother, and nice to be able to pay forward the wonderful experience I had in the ward in Cheyenne.
After church was over, I actually took some time to sit down at the piano and just play for maybe 30 or 45 minutes.
That was nice. I miss making music. 🤍
Back at the ranch, I decided to risk letting both horses out at the same time. Gives more munch time for the horses and requires less of my time to watch over them.
Gratefully, neither of the horses took off very far, so that was good, and they both got to munch for a decent amount of time.
Ate some lunch and chatted with Heather and Hans a bit, and then for whatever reason, proceeded to let myself get sucked into light-diminishing things on my phone again. Nothing destructive, gratefully, but the light I’m living in is easily crowded out by even neutral things.
Speaking of nothing destructive, today is my two-month sobriety mark, and I’m grateful. I think maybe I’ve done better than I’ve ever done before at not taking for granted the gift that it is to be clean and sober. Certainly, I’ve had much longer periods of sobriety, but there’s a difference inside of me right now. I’m grateful for that difference. 🙏
I hope it continues. I hope I don’t let myself lapse into complacency, taking for granted this incredible gift.
Or I guess I should say that I hope that I’m able to quickly arrest any slide away from the light, so that I can maintain that strength.
Speaking of strength, I had a good gospel conversation with Cory. Gratefully, he called just as I was in the middle of consuming my “neutral” light chasers. For part of the conversation, we talked about love and loving God with all our hearts. Ever since he sent me the related question the other day, I’ve been thinking a fair bit about it.
After that, I inexplicably slipped right back into neutral things, feeling the light fade but doing it anyway.
I think part of the reason was that I was just so tired that it was easier to just consume something.
As tired as I was, I decided to take a nap, which would give me some needed sleep and stop me from chasing away the light I’ve worked so hard to live in.
My nap turned out to be… hours. I don’t remember exactly what time I fell asleep, but I want to say it was probably somewhere around 5:00, and I finally woke up after 8:00.
Generally, if I take a nap that long during the day, that means I end up having a really rough night’s sleep, off of not being able to fall asleep for a long time.
Really hoping that’s not the case tonight. I’m really tired, so… 🤞
As usually happens if I take a nap, I woke up super groggy. I chatted with Hans for a little bit about house stuff, and Heather got back shortly after that from being out serving people in need. 🤍
We all chatted for a while and then had prayer before Hans went to bed. I also chatted with my buddy John, realizing I’d misread his message about his availability in Utah. He’s not going to be available until later, so now I’ve got to decide if I’m still going to go down to Utah early this week as I had planned or if I’m going to wait a little longer.
So that decision is on the docket now.
Back to my nap… not only was I groggy from my nap, but I felt like all the light I’d worked hard to get was just gone.
🙁
So Heather and I listened to an old talk from nearly 40 years ago from President Benson that was phenomenal, focusing on that topic that’s been so much on my mind lately–loving God with all our hearts.
I was grateful to feel like coming back in as we listened to that talk. 🙏
I really don’t want to lose the light. It’s just crazy to me to realize how often I’ve voluntarily chosen to walk away from it, be it succumbing to fear or choices like I made today.
Anyway, I chatted with Heather a little bit after listening to the talk, and now here I am. It’s just coming up on midnight, and I’ve got a little bit of a headache, but I’m really tired, so… I really hope that means I can sleep tonight and that my nap didn’t mess up my rhythm like it usually does. 🤞
Well, folks, looks like I did it. A little bit of self-discipline. 🙏
There are other things I could write about from today, such as my concern for Curly (our longest-tenured rabbit). I think Fiona might have accidentally stepped on her today. 😕 And I haven’t seen her since.
Really hoping she’s okay. 🙏
G’night y’all. Loves. 🤍
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 