(written on the 26th)
I was up late last night, veging a bit, when somewhere around perhaps 1 a.m., and perhaps unsurprisingly, I started feeling the pull to seek out pornography.
Play stupid games… 😅
Gratefully, and perhaps just a touch shy of miraculously, instead of using, I called my incredible mother (who leaves her phone on through the night to be able to serve those who are in need (as I was last night).
I didn’t need a lot. I didn’t need a long conversation. I just needed to be accountable to someone for where I was at and to have someone be there as I transitioned from staring at my phone, to putting everything away, brushing my teeth, and going to bed.
And she did that for me. Thank you, mama. 🤍🙏🤍
The contrast between how I felt this morning versus how I would have felt had I given in and used was striking.
Using gives excitement and pleasure, but it doesn’t bring light or love. For me, it brings darkness. Having tasted of God’s light and His love, there’s just no comparison. None. It’s the best. 🥰 It’s what I hunger for, and partaking of it and becoming it is worth the cost.
And… when I woke up this morning, instead of darkness, I had it. I was full of light and joy. 🥰
Thank you, Lord. 🤍🙏🤍
So I was happy and upbeat this morning, full of smiles singing, and just… happy. 😊
I transferred my battery charger from resurrection mode to charge mode. Hopefully, my battery can be brought back to life.
But if not… 🙃
I spent part of the morning packing up, as I decided (of a sudden?) to just go ahead and go to Arkansas. Being filled with light and love and happiness, I was also full of energy and confidence and decisiveness, and I just… decided to go. 🙃
Part of my reason for not wanting to go was the miserable heat paired with the suffocating humidity. It’s going to be triple digits there just like it has been here, but with a super abundance of moisture in the air. 😅
But… I endured the nasty heat in Arkansas for nearly a decade. I can handle a miserable handful of days without AC in my van. People all over the world have to deal with that discomfort without relief.
It’s good for me to remember.
Hopefully, while there, I’ll be able to make a good progress on converting my van back to a gasser. 🤞
But if but… 😊
Went into the trailer and listened to a talk with Heather and Hans before heading back out to work on organizing and packing all the spare parts in Rover.
Gratefully, my main battery seemed to charge okay. I didn’t try to start the van to test, simply moving the charger to one of my jump boxes to hopefully resurrect it.
I forget exactly what time it started, but somebody on Facebook Marketplace who had messaged me previously about my skid steer messaged me again, and he started asking lots of questions about it. He was from Tulsa and said he wanted to buy a skid steer today.
So I arranged with my mom once again to be there, and gratefully, she printed out a couple copies of a bill of sale that I wrote up.
While waiting to hear back from the potential buyer about if or when he was going to leave Tulsa to come look at the skid steer, I spent some time changing out the filters and the hydraulic fluid in the tractor, hoping that doing the cell would resolve the issue of the significant lack of power that started last week some time?
It took me a good little while to do the service, as I had forgotten where the drain plugs were, and which fill hole I needed to put the fluid back in. It was also a little weird that one of the oil filters seemed to bottom out instead of tighten progressively as I gave more effort like I would have expected, like is the case with regular oil filters.
Spent some time chatting with Heather for a bit, ate some fabulous sandwiches that she made, And then headed back out working on organizing and packing my van.
One of my jump boxes seemed to resurrect as well, though I won’t know until I need it. 🙃 (unless I still have my battery tester in Arkansas? I’m thinking maybe it bit the dust, but I don’t remember for sure).
After Heather and Hans left to run the errands up in Rapid City and whatnot, I started working on the trench, and it was while I was working on the trench, in fact during a particularly frustrating portion of my efforts, that the gentleman from Tulsa finally showed up, put my skid steer through its paces, and decided to go ahead and buy it. 🥳
He offered a lot less than what I was asking, but also a lot more than what my worst-case scenario was. In fact, I got more than I had figured I was going to get. 🥳
Once again, a huge shout out and thank you to my mother, who after saving my little butt in the middle of the night, is the reason I now have two of my four pieces of heavy equipment sold and off the list of to do’s hanging over my head.
🥰
She even weeded around my skid steer in the heat of the day and braved the ticks and weeds to go down to the shed to grab the extra parts for the skid steer.
You’re a gem, mother. 🩵🥰🩵
I kept working on the trench until probably around 8:15 or so, a little discouraged because I spent so much time working on it, and now I’m worried that I messed stuff up. Every four feet, the slope is supposed to drop one inch, and I was using a laser level to verify the slope, but then you also have to make sure that the slope between each 4-ft marked section is also going down at the same quarter inch per foot rate.
So I had the bright idea of taking a straight flat 2×4, putting the level on top of it, and slowly working my way down the entire length of the trench making sure the slope was a quarter inch per foot, per the level.
That seemed to work out great for the first four feet, but then when I got to the 8 foot mark, I seemed to be maybe 3/16 of an inch lower than I should have been. 😕
Just like in navigation, 3/16 might not be much now, but over the course of the rest of the trench, that’s a heck of a lot of difference.
[sigh]
I’ve decided I don’t like French drains. 😆
I’ll do septic lines all day everyday. Those are a cakewalk compared to French drains, at least for a perfectionist like me. 😅
Anyway, so I didn’t get anywhere near close to finishing the trench as I had hoped to accomplish before leaving, and I ended up staying later than I had anticipated.
I think the sun was pretty much down by the time I got going. Oh well.
But if not, right? 🙃
I filled up my water at J.H. Keith, took a quick bath (which felt good), and then was off down the road to Nebraska.
I spent a little time chatting with my mom, and then a little bit of time chatting with Cory. Gratefully, I had taken the time to find a functional pair of marshmallow earbuds, and I spent a bunch of time listening recordings I made of of spiritual experiences that I’ve had. I also listened to a talk that my sister Heather shared with me, repeating the talk probably three or four times.
Given that it was Saturday night, and given that I wasn’t wanting to stop to pay for anything on Sunday tomorrow, I strategically tried to drive as far as I could tonight and to end the night with a full tank (and a full gas can) in the hopes that I would have enough fuel to finish the drive tomorrow.
The first gas station I stopped at cut the pump off early, which I didn’t realize until I’d driven away, so I stopped again at another one maybe 30 minutes further down the road.
It was about that time that I realized that I hadn’t properly planned for where I was going to be sleeping for the night. 😅
Being on country back roads and not on the main Highway, I couldn’t just choose a truck stop to go crash at, and freecampsites.net didn’t have anything listed nearby that was doable in my big van (there was one place along my route that had free camping, but it was in the middle of a sand dune, I guess people regularly get stuck there. Four-wheel drive only, and I definitely do not have four-wheel drive. 🙃)
So I figured my best option was going to be to crash at a church parking lot in one of the little towns. Unfortunately, the nearest town along my route that had a church parking lot was another hour-and-a-half drive down the road, and I was really tired. 😅
So I pushed myself, doing what I could to try to stay awake and not crash, until I finally made it, about 3ish in the morning. The sun was going to come up about 6:30, which meant I wasn’t going to get much sleep before the van got cooked in this brutal heat.
And there wasn’t anywhere to park in the shade except for right in front of the small utility shed, blocking off the door. 😅
I decided to risk being disturbed, backing my van up quite close to the roll-up door of the utility shed, in the hopes that it would stave off the heat as long as possible.
Hopefully, nobody is bothered that I’m here tonight. 🤞
Lots of comfortable blessings to be grateful for today. 😊 I appreciate days with comfortable blessings. I’m not as good at being grateful for the uncomfortable blessings. 🙃
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 