(written on the 27th and again on the 2nd from notes taken previously)
I was grateful to be able to sleep in today. I’ve been struggling to get my journal written, as any of y’all who are regular readers have noticed. 😅
That’s mostly been because I’ve been hanging out with people until way late, and then since the sun comes up early, and my van gets hot early, and I want as much sleep as I can get before the van gets hot, so I choose to go to bed instead of staying up to write in my journal.
I feel like I’ve written that already in days past…
Unfortunately, I haven’t been writing in my journal when I wake up in the morning either, nor at any point during the day, which of course then translates into me being behind… again. 😅
Oh well.
I’ll get myself caught up again, and I’ll continue working on trying to get this daily habit solidified again.
Let’s see… today…
Often when I wake up, my first thoughts (most likely a result of continual less-effective neural pathway construction) are to entertain myself, perhaps with an exciting new update from one of my favorite tech channels on YouTube.
But doing so does not bring me light. It’s fun. It can be exciting. But it doesn’t bring light.
If I’m remembering correctly, I was able to catch myself first thing this morning, and have been able to fairly regularly, putting light first.
I think that’s making a pretty big difference. 🙏
Speaking of light, the person I reconnected with yesterday replied to the book I had written her night before last (she called it a novella 🙃), and writing another message to her this morning brought light and joy. 😊
🙏
I added more light to my day with a lovely gospel discussion after breakfast, talking about my book, the nature of God, etc. 🥰
I decided to try and let the horses out together to munch this morning, which… didn’t work out so well. Fiona, the curious one, rather quickly made a beeline for the neighbors property, and River followed, leaving me having no idea how far they were going to go.
😅
Gratefully, either they decided to stop on their own, or my calling after them with something in my hand got them to stop (I often bring them orange peels and apple cores as treats, though this time simply grabbed a handful of grass).
Once I was to them and had hold of lead ropes, I kept hold of them with one hand while using my phone to journal with the other.
Hans was up in Rapid City for I forget what, and since we were in need of hay, Heather had been looking for some online and had found someone, so we made preparations for her to be able to go and get it.
At first, we were going to borrow the neighbor’s trailer (which they very graciously offered to let us use), but after considering the complexity of needing to build retaining walls for it to hold in all the hay, it seemed simpler just to use the horse trailer. Accordingly, we cleaned it out, removed the heavy divider door, got it hitched up to the truck, checked the tires, and with that, Heather was off to meet up with the seller a couple hours north of us.
With both Heather and Hans gone, I turned my attention to getting rid of as many of the yucca plants from the property as I could. I didn’t realize until just recently that the yuccas weren’t wanted. It seems like just about every “yard” I see people mow around the yuccas, and I figured people were keeping them as a means of preserving some of the natural aesthetic of the area.
Apparently not. 🙃
Apparently, they’re just so thick and fibrous that they can’t be mowed over, so people go around them instead of going to the work of digging them up. 😅
So I grabbed the tractor and set to work digging up as many yuccas as I could before I needed to go into town to help an older couple in our congregation who needed someone to pick up their dog from the vet/boarding place before the place closed (the older couple had been out of town on a trip and were going to get back just barely after the place closed).
Gratefully, I managed to get most of the yuccas (and all of the big ones) out of the front and side yards before I needed to leave. 🙏
Hawk, the black lab? I was picking up was fabulously friendly and curious, and though I think I might have accidentally closed the tip of his tail in the door when he readily jumped in my passenger seat (he yelped when I closed the door, and when I came over to the driver side, he crawled across my power station and into my lap seemingly for comfort (his tail, if it had been in the door, was out of the door by then).
After a bit of comfort, he seemed to be just fine 🙏, and after driving over to Bomgaars where we were to meet the older couple about 30 minutes later, He curiously and energetically wandered the parking lot (leash in hand) for all but the last few minutes of the wait, when the clouds that had been spitting on us here and there opened up and started pouring.
The lovely older couple was super grateful, and we quickly made this handoff of puppy and things in the pouring rain.
Lovely people, lovely puppy. 😊
With church in the morning, I decided to drive right on by the dirt road to the ranch in order to get my bath tonight (as well as do a little bit of laundry, washing my white shirt, pants, and white temple socks).
It was nice to have J.H. Keith Park to myself 😊 (with the thunderstorm, it probably wasn’t too enticing 🙃), and I enjoyed my little dip while getting my laundry clean.
Back at the ranch, I continued my deyuccaing efforts, this time in the backyard, which was a lot more gratifying because the before-and-after contrast was so much greater, because the grass was already short in the back.
Once I was done with that and had the carcasses piled up by the trash bin, I set to clearing out all of the cactus patches in the main pasture.
Heather had marked them (many many many of them 😅) with flags, so I knew where to look for them, and with mattock in hand, I went to town.
Gratefully, the soil was soft from all the rain, and I was able to get them all out by the roots. 🙏
I’m sure there are others in the pasture that we haven’t noticed yet, but with all of these gone, it feels a lot safer to mow the pasture, as needed (I probably mentioned this already, and you probably already knew anyway, but if you mow over those little cactus nodes, each little node can start a new plant, rooting directly into the ground from wherever it lies. 😅
I got the horses and dog fed and the dishes done before Heather and Hans got home, and after chatting a little bit, we had prayer, and I headed out to Rover for the night.
Before going to bed, I responded to a message my newly-reconnected-with friend had sent, which was a little nerve-wracking because this particular person is easily one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met in her strength and faith, and I’ve… not been strong nor able to hold onto faith.
She had stumbled across my YouTube channel (how that happened I have no idea, because they certainly didn’t go viral) and was curious which of my “fear” videos was the very first one, as she wanted to better understand the impetus.
Well, in that first video, I mentioned the web address for my blog, and though she’s an absolutely incredible person who would probably be the last person to judge, it was nerve-wracking to think of someone so solid seeing the… tremendous turbulence… the debilitating darkness. …much of my soul laid bare.
I mean, that’s the whole purpose of my blog, to share those kinds of things, so that others feel… safer in their own imperfections, seeing good people struggle with both hard and not-good things (yes, as imperfect as I am, I do consider myself a good person).
But thinking about somebody like her reading it… I just want to hide, because of how… embarrassed I am at how… weak, how much of a struggler I’ve been.
But embarrassment comes from self-centeredness, pride, and I want to be free of every last particle of pride and full of pure, perfect love. I want to be love, and being love means being unconcerned by others perception of me, except insofar as their perceptions of me are harmful to them, and my concern is for them.
All that is to say, I swallowed my pride and sent her the link to that first video. 😅
Here’s to continuing efforts to choose love over the selfishness of pride. 🥂
🤍
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 