The windmills of my mind

As has not been at all uncommon, because there are many interrelated topics that interest me deciding the order of the upcoming blog posts has been difficult. (If you read regularly, you have heard that one before.) I was thinking about it when I went to bed last night and when I woke up this morning.

I often do a little scripture study before I pray, suspecting that my brain will be working a little better and that my prayer will be a little more effective when I get to it. Having my mind both alert and focused in the morning is not really easy for me.

Today I studied first, and I can't exactly say that it worked because as soon as I knelt down my mind starting going all over the place, but then one thought sent me down a path that it needed to go.

That one may be a little too personal to talk about right now. I can say that it was important, and that it removed some pressure from me. It also was not what I was expecting; currently morning and night my primary thought is always what do I need to do to get some money and get these bills paid. Given my situation (two months behind on everything), that is a very reasonable prayer. (Maybe I can also say that the unexpected path was related to my other main concern.)

So I took that path, and then as I was wrapping up I tried to return to my primary purpose, and my brain started squirreling around again. As I started to get frustrated with that, I had another thought.

There are two frustrating things that my mind does. It will often circle round and round, continuously, turning over the problems that I can't crack. At other times it will get distracted, continuously thinking of new things to look up, like Red Riding Hood seeing another clump of wildflowers until hopelessly drawn from the path.

They seem opposite in nature, perhaps similar in mental energy, but they are different ways of spending the energy and they feel different. Visually, one is a circle and one is a branch, and what really unites them is whether or not I should have been doing something else the entire time.

What came to me today is that this is how my knowledge base is built. The things that I know, I know because of this.

There was probably something else that helped. Another person read Cara, and she came to me Sunday and while she thought the story was cute, what really impressed her was how I explained various gospel concepts in the novel, because they were so clear. And I was thinking, that's what I do: I explain things. And I can explain things because of how my mind works.

When you combine the circles and the branches you get a network, a web, a database with a helpful reference guide --- I don't know; it's something.

This is how I am made and it serves a purpose.

I will not be frustrated with it anymore.