“4/29
“Truth be told, I am still holding back several areas of my life.
“As far as early morning devotion time goes, I don’t want to move up my alarm time if I haven’t gotten to bed by 12, but to do so, I need to head upstairs with Daniel, which means I need to surrender all time after 10, and perhaps even a little before.”
“I am also reluctant to surrender my TV/video tape time due to the (I believe reasonable) fear that God might impress upon me the need to prune it a bit (or even a lot).”
Dearest Rachel –
It’s been so long since Daniel was that little – and since he slept in his bed upstairs – that I almost forget about the fact that we (mostly you, I’m afraid, as I would always retire by 10:30 in order to get up in time to head off to work) had to bundle him up and bring him to his room upstairs to sleep. And as you admit, it was a fairly long, drawn out process, taking the better part of two hours to convince him to settle in for the night.
And in order to commit yourself to getting in the ward, you had to commit to something like this, getting him to bed at such a reasonable hour. I hate to say that was beyond your power, but I can’t remember you getting him off to bed that early. Of course, this was over seventeen years ago; there’s been a lot of things I’ve forgotten since then.
I suppose you came to the same conclusion that I did, that it was too much trouble to try. All I ever tried to do was to lead by example – I would retire at 10:30 at night, give or take a few minutes, in hopes that the two of you would take the hint. It never really worked; as it is, it seems I’ve been staying up much later than any other of the other gentleman on this retreat, for instance (but then again, I’m trying to write to you at night because it’s the only time I get). So evidently, the influence went the opposite direction from the way it was intended. Oh, well…
I agree, though, that it’s so hard to surrender everything to Him. There are things you want to be, things you want to do, and somehow in the back of your mind, you’re pretty sure He would prefer you not follow that path. But it’s such a fun path to be on, isn’t it?
In a way, it’s probably like trying to stick to a healthy diet. There’s nothing particularly wrong with dessert now and again, but you’ve got to get some vegetables in there too. And you can’t have dessert for every course. It’s just too much.
Although, speaking of that, I wonder what you would think were I to tell you about how neither Daniel nor I can bring ourselves to go back to Chili’s anymore. It’s just not a meal there unless we finish it off with that molten lava cake that they always featured, and that’s no fun anymore without being able to share it with you.
And this is one more reason why I can’t bring myself to give up on digitizing everything you recorded; so much time and effort went into its collection, and it was so important to you – even to the point at which you worried that it was something keeping you from experiencing God to the fullest by not relinquishing it from your everyday schedule. And of course, now you’ve left it behind.
Letters to Rachel 