I believe in God.
I was taught from birth that I am a child of God. I have believed that to be true all my life. Actually, it is more than belief. I have always known that God lives and that I am one of his sons. Every human that has ever lived is a literal spirit child of God. Every living thing from the tiny insects to the largest whales were created by God, but only we humans are his literal offspring.
That knowledge has been a blessing to me all my life, and I wish I could explain how I know those things are true, but I can’t. My wish to explain or to prove what I know about God springs from what almost seems like a physical need to help others feel peace, hope, and faith. Forgive me if I sound self-righteous. I am no better than anyone else. God does not love me any more than he loves anyone else. Still, he planted in me undeniable knowledge of his existence, accompanied by a desire to share that knowledge with anyone with a desire to receive it.
Knowledge about God is a gift for which I am grateful. It has blessed me and sustained me for more than fifty years. While I cherish the certainty that I am a son of a loving Father in Heaven, there are many other concepts, principles, gifts, skills, and abilities, that I lack. One crucial talent I lack is the ability to sustain focused attention for an extended period of time. For example, due to minor but irresistible distractions, it took me over an hour last night to write just the first two paragraphs of this post. And the mental effort I exerted for only that much productivity left me completed exhausted and ready to sleep. I woke up briefly, four or five times during the night, and got up for the day a little after 6:00 am, determined to continue writing. I have been far more consistent and productive this morning than I have for years, and yet, it is already 7:30 am and distractions have only permitted me to write this one paragraph.
I don’t know how productive other writes are, and perhaps one paragraph per hour/hour and a half is acceptable for some. But my problem is not isolated to struggles with pushing through distractions while writing; a far more devastating problem I have is getting myself to set aside time to write, to sit down when that time arrives, and to face the inevitably exhausting writing process. Ok, there you go. My mind just checked out after I wrote that last sentence. I got distracted and lost in a warm wash of shame and self-pity. I know I could rebound, continue writing, and turn this into a triumph. But it is a choice, and voices in my head are screaming at me, telling me that I must get up, walk away, get a snack, distract my mind, or I will be overcome by self-loathing.
Oh boy, this is exciting. I did it. I stayed in my seat, identified the thoughts that created the urge to run, and I captured the power in those thoughts by exposing them in writing. It works!
And now the rest of the house is waking up. The dogs are running around my room, the kids are jumping on my bed, and I legitimately can no longer focus. It’s okay, though. I can build on that small success.
It's About Time 