For unknown reasons, I thought that last Sunday was fast Sunday. Probably because of something I heard my mother say while I wasn’t really paying attention. This is an amazing phenomenon of my mind; I am capable of spacing out, but still catch the key words of what the people around me are saying. Somewhere in my mind, it registers that these things are important and then stores them. When I go to recall what someone has said, my mind then backforms the conversation around the key words and gives me what it thinks is the most plausible explanation for that specific sequence of key words.
This is probably what happened this weekend. On Saturday, while I was chillin’ with my family in SLC, my grandpa and I began discussing our gospel doctrine lessons for the next day. Now, my grandfather is one of those people who always has to be right and thinks he knows everything. This is what makes him a great lawyer and at the same time really annoying to me. So, he was attempting to dictate to me how I should give my lesson and I stopped paying attention. At this point, my mom chimed in, knowing I was getting irritated, and was talking about Sunday in general. I still wasn’t paying attention. I’m sure the words and phrases ‘Sunday’, ‘fast’, ‘before General Conference’, and ‘this’ were said at some point and, thinking that it might be important when my conscious returned from its mental vacation elsewhere, my mind stored the words for later. When I was thinking about the conversation later my mind supplied me with this backformation: “This Sunday is the Sunday before General Conference and, therefore, it is fast Sunday.”
I didn’t even think to confirm the validity of this statement and just assumed that the next day was fast Sunday. So, upon waking on Sunday, I hurriedly finished my lesson for class and took my antibiotic on my way out the door. I was fasting.
This is really not a big deal and I think that the Lord would have been okay with me fasting an extra Sunday, or (heaven forbid!) would allow me to substitute my anachronistic fast for the real one next week. The problem was not the fast; the problem was the antibiotic. The warning label tells me not to take it on an empty stomach and my stomach was definitely empty when I got to church. Now, I’m not feeling too great anyways and am still recovering from being sick, so when the room started spinning and my head started hurting, I was not happy and I couldn’t seem to shove the discomfort aside like I usually do. However, I couldn’t go home. I had to teach the lesson in gospel doctrine and I couldn’t pass it off to Skylark, because she has had to do the lessons for the last two weeks since I was sick. Therefore, I went to Sunday school and taught, but I took off my heels (the shoes, not the body part) and explained that I was less likely to fall over with my feet firmly planted on the floor (I was really tempted to change that preposition to ‘in’ because of the cool images that it calls to mind). I also didn’t seem to be thinking before I spoke and ended up musing out loud whether or not Potiphar’s wife was hot because that would make a huge difference in how big of a temptation her invitation was. Despite my headache and dizziness the lesson went well, but I definitely went home after class to get some food in my stomach.
The moral of the story is to read the warning labels on your medication and not to fast on any Sunday but the one that was arbitrarily set aside for that purpose.
6 days ago
