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So many scars and so many stories, yet truth be told we don’t make the emotional scars part of the story telling rotation.

 

Source: Show Me Your Scars

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I stood in the hallway leading out of my bedroom. I had just dressed for the day and had intended to go out to water the lawn. For some reason, I had paused with a thought that I should go out the front door to my house rather than thru the garage as I normally do. My mind had immediately rebelled; it argued that this was not the most efficient way, it required more steps and more time to do it that way. As I had this internal argument I resolved that it wasn’t really going to make that much difference; besides I have been counting steps with the expectation that more is better. I resolved to go out the front door and gather a few dozen more steps.

After I had turned on the last sprinkler at the back of my yard, I needed to move that sprinkler from where it had watered last evening. As I walked towards it I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. There scurrying across the dirt road that separates my home from the city’s property to the both of my home was a young skunk in all of his black and white glory.

I paused with another dilemma, what to do. I had spoken with my brother just a couple of nights before about our youthful adventures fighting these ever too prevalent stinky omnivores on our farm as kids. We laughed at the many adventures using primitive weapons to win the war against them. We had talked about the last battles we had.

As I thought back on that conversation the skunk helped me decide what to do. He continued his travels across my yard towards my garage.

Now, my mind quickly raced to try and remember which door I had used to come out of the house, such are the troubles of age, not 5 minutes previous had I decided to use the front door but I was unsure of whether the garage doors were all closed. It was possible that someone had gone thru the garage and left it open.

I knew if there was a door open on my garage this stinky real life “Pepé Le Pew” was going to dart into my garage and start wandering around. I was not very excited about the prospects of Pepé Le Pew finding his way in and my challenge of convincing him to leave without giving me a smelly present to have to resolve over the course of the rest of my vacation.

As I followed him around the corner I was relieved to see the doors all shut. Pepé Le Pew had continued his travels to the front yard and with very little coaxing he had traveled past the apple tree and proceeded down the rock wall into the poppies.

I continued to shoo him out of the flower bed when he decided his travels would take him onward until he had cruised all the way to the field across the street. I was glad to see him decide to not spend much time on my family estate.

Why was it I paused to think about taking a different route than I do EVERY OTHER TIME I leave the house?

I am a believer that God can and will inspire us to make good decisions. The Holy Ghost is there to help us in our lives, even when we don’t think it matters. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference in my eternal welfare if I had gone out through the garage. Well, probably not completely true as I am certain I would have reverted to some sailor language and would certainly have used the entire dictionary of profanity that I have accumulated over my lifetime.

I have learned over the course of years that the Spirit will give us hints to life. Some might say that intuition or Karma or luck was on my side. The karma of feeling sorry for the war with this skunk’s ancestors certainly could be in my side. The luck of feeling that extra steps would be good for my health is also a great coincidence.

I will be more inclined to believe the Holy Ghost provided me with a prompting and inspiration. I could have chosen to ignore it, you remember I had that internal discussion where I tried to talk myself out of going through the front door. Did I recognize that it was personal revelation as it was happening? Of course not, but once I did realize it, I stopped what I was doing to record it.

Why record it? I hope that by taking the time to record it I can learn to recognize it. I must learn to recognize that influence before I try to talk myself out of following the guidance I received. The other reason to save these kinds of experiences is to share with my posterity. The generations that follow me need to know that I have felt the Holy Ghost. They need to know that I learned to recognize the spirit when it came. They need to know that I could and did do that which the spirit inspired.

This experience is just one of many where I have been able to see the hand of divine providence in my life. It does still happen and it will happen to all if they are willing to live life with a desire to do the Lord’s will. Our Heavenly Father loves us and doesn’t want us to experience every possible bad thing that could happen to us. We can avoid many of those when we listen to inspiration.