You probably don't know what I'm writing about. So, I will back up a little bit to explain what I am talking about. In November 1992, my brother's girlfriend set me up on a date with her neighbor. Her neighbor happened to be a lady by the name of Stephanie. Stephanie had happened to gain two tickets to a Utah Jazz basketball game in a luxury suite box. I went on a blind date with her to see the Utah Jazz play.
We dated a short time and soon decided to get married. I started to notice right off that there would likely be problems. Instead of just getting out while I could I thought that things might get better but – things never did get much better. I was in my 20s and didn't have any kids. This was a time where I was able to acquire a lot of stuff. For example, I had a PlayStation with quite a few games. I had a lot of nice clothes that I had bought at Nordstrom. I had a cell phone. My mom had recently given me photo albums and baby journals that had a lot of information in them.
I had served a mission in Sao Paulo, Brazil from 1989 to 1991 and had acquired a few things there. I had taken photographs and put them into a scrapbook so a lot of these things were things that got left behind in California.
In February 2000, Stephanie and I decided to move to Southern California. She had lost her job and I didn't know how we were going to make rent. We had an offer to go live in her parent's basement and so we moved to Southern California and lived there it took me about two months to find a job but I finally had a job doing customer service for an escrow company.
On our trip out of Utah to Southern California I hooked up our Mazda Miata to a tow trailer and I had to mistakenly forgotten to take it out of gear and when we were towing it and I destroyed the engine so when we got to Southern California we did not have a vehicle. We were lucky though, one of our friends told us about a Hyundai Excel for sale for $300.
 |
| This isn't my particular Hyundai Excel, but it's the same color and type as the Hyundai I bought in California. |
In July 2000, I was cleaning the house. There was a lot of clothes in a walk-in closet that were on the floor and I wanted to get them picked up and into the wash and I was attempting to do that while Stephanie was sleeping. It was about 7 PM so it wasn't super late but she was trying to sleep. She got mad and started throwing things at me and I got upset about it. I told her that I was trying to clean the house, that I wasn't tired, that I didn't want to sleep, and that I just wanted to get things cleaned because I was tired of the mess.
She continued to throw things at me. I walked into a different walk-in closet, got down on my knees, and prayed saying something to the effect of I wanted to leave and didn't know if I should leave or not. I felt a peace come over me it felt like love. I thought this probably was an answer because I was just feeling such peace and love.
When I came out of the closet, Stephanie was gone. I went upstairs and she was laying down on the couch. I went back downstairs and I grabbed some clothes and a few other things and I got in the car and was about to drive to Utah. At that particular moment, Stephanie's brother pulled up. I told him what I was doing, I told him not to tell Stephanie until the next day. He told me that I might want to get our dog and take our dog to Utah too. Angus was our yellow Labrador retriever. I went back inside and got Angus and put him in the car and drove to Utah with Angus.
 |
| Not Angus, but this is what he looked like. |
It was probably about 9 PM California time when I decided to start driving to Utah I remember, I didn't get to Utah until about five or 6 AM Utah time. I had called my mom and told her that I was leaving and needed a place to stay. I showed up at her house and stayed there. I had hardly any possessions. I wrote an email to one of my friends, Susan, and she told me that she had got a job doing support for Microsoft. I applied for that job and got that job.
During this time, my brother Clint, and his wife Carissa were still dating. They were engaged to be married and my mom wanted to buy a some presents for them. I left Angus tied up out in front of my mom's house and went with my mom to go by wedding presents for Clint and Carissa. When we got back from buying presents, Angus was gone. I looked all over for him but I could not find him. To this day, I don't know what happened to Angus.
Over the years, I've been able to reacquire much of my lost music collection. I don't have a PlayStation. I have reacquired games on my computer. However, I don't like to play games as much as I used to. Thanks to the advent of the Internet, I've been able to get pictures from former mission companions and relive some of those memories. I've been able to get reacquainted with the majority of the companions that I knew all my LDS mission.
The whole experience has taught me however, that I can live without possessions. The hardest thing, was leaving a person that was abusive because, at the time, I felt like my being there was helping her. I came to realize that she would never get better unless she hurt a little bit and wanted to get better. So I hope that my leaving helped her to better her life.
I think God used the whole experience to teach me that I don't need people or possessions to be happy, I can live without people and possessions. People and possessions make life easier. But, if you still have God, you still have something. And I've learned that God does answer prayers and is there for you when you call on him. Ultimately, we will leave this life with nothing. The only thing that we will have after this life is our relationship with God.
