The Provo, Utah Years, Pt. 3 (’09-’13)

I don’t remember why I chose to, but somewhere around the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009 (I think the latter), I decided to move back to live with my dad and step mom in Provo, Utah.

As I think I mentioned in the previous autobiographical sketch, the University of Utah, after the financial crash of 2008, had fewer classes to teach (I think that’s what it was anyway), and they gave preference to graduate students first, and second to instructors who’d been teaching longer than I had, so I got the ax.

After losing my job there, I went on unemployment for the first time in my life (and hopefully the only time, as I’m sort of morally against it at this point), and I started looking for jobs. I had to apply for at least two jobs a week to keep my unemployment benefits, so I tried to do my due diligence and look for work–at least two a week, anyway.

Sometime in the Spring of 2009, I was online looking at job postings on one of the computers in the home office my dad and step mom had built for their business, when I saw the perfect job. There was a private K-12 school that was looking for a high-school teacher.

I got super excited.

I love teaching.

I researched the school, wrote up my resume and whatever else, submitted my application, and within a fairly short amount of time, I’d been interviewed, they’d had me teach one of their classes (so they could observe me teach), and I’d been hired!

I spent the next few months of the school year and then the summer getting to know the youth who might end up being my students the coming fall, and when fall rolled around, I dove right in.

I loved teaching. My students were my life. I loved them to death and did everything I could to be the best teacher I could for them.

It was harder than university-level teaching, though. For the first time, I actually had real concerns with behavioral problems and whatnot (although those problems were super tame by any public school teacher’s standards, I think. They were absolutely wonderful kids).

Being a part of that school and teaching those kids consumed just about every aspect my life for about three months that fall: In to work early. Didn’t leave until after 10 p.m. most nights it seemed. It was crazy. It was stressful. It was awesome.

I became close friends with some of my colleagues and even became a close family friend to some of my students and their mothers, going on activities together outside of school and whatnot. It was a wonderful time.

I miss those days…

(sigh)

Then my addiction happened.

One night, while on a home computer doing things in preparation for a date with a woman I was super excited to take out, an inappropriate image happened to be in a collection of otherwise innocuous images on the scree in front of me.

It was totally something I wasn’t looking for, but instead of just leaving it alone, I gave in, looked at it, one thing led to another, and I had a full relapse (pornography and masturbation).

The school I worked for had an honor code that no teachers could participate in that kind of thing–anywhere–so it didn’t matter that I was at home at the time, it was against the honor code; So I called up the principal (I think the next day), let him know, and perhaps a week later I was told that I was going to be fired.

That was super tough.

I finished out the last week or so that they had me stay while they tried to arrange how to move on without me. I told my students I was leaving, fighting off tears in the process, but, at the request/suggestion of the principal, I didn’t tell them why, just that I was.

I wanted to tell them why.

I’d been a person they trusted and were personal with, and they deserved to know why.

(sigh)

Interestingly, though it was super hard to leave, on my last day of school there, as I sat in my office chair in my classroom gazing across the room, probably a little glassy eyed, I had a clear impression. The impression seemed to come from god and went something like this: “Your work here is finished. You’ve done what you came here to do.”

I think that probably helped me cope a bit with the pain of leaving. I should probably admit, however, that I’d be lying if I didn’t say that there was also a huge weight lifted off my shoulders once I’d left (not having so many lessons to prepare for and behavioral issues to figure out). The massive stress involved in working so hard and trying so hard to be the very best I could be for my students was gone.

But there was also a void.

I missed them. I missed teaching. I missed my students, my colleague friends…

Only a couple of months after leaving the school, I had perhaps the most powerful spiritual experience of my life. It was January of 2010, and I was trying to figure something out: Sometime during the last week of 2009, I’d felt like god had shared something with me, but I didn’t understand why he’d shared it. It was like “Here, have this piece of information without any context at all). After having the experience, I had told a few family members about it, and then I shared it with one other person on New Year’s Eve, as I remember, but again, I didn’t understand why god had shared it with me. What was the purpose?

(btw, I’d share publicly what I felt god told me, but there’s another party to this experience, and to protect privacy, I’m not going to go into details of the experience or name names.)

Anyway… the beginning few weeks of 2010 saw lots of changes for me. Of course I wasn’t teaching anymore, but I also lost contact with some of my closest friends, and probably halfway through the month of January I went up to Washington State for a while It was while I was there that I had that powerful spiritual experience–certainly the most impactful, and likely the most powerful of my whole life.

I can’t share it because I promised god I wouldn’t, and as I think I mentioned before, even though I’m struggling with the whole god thing right now, I’m going to do my best to keep that in confidence for the time being. That might change later. We’ll see. But for now… the keys are zipped.

Anyway, I was intensely curious about what I’d felt god had told me that last week of December. I didn’t understand the purpose. Why tell it to me with no context?

So I set some time aside, and I got a paper and pen out, and I just prayed and prayed, and I war gamed possible reasons why god would have told me, and I came up with four possibilities, and then the experience happened.

It was so powerful for me.

It was like god just reached out and spoke to me and was like, “I’ll tell you, on condition that you don’t share it with other people.” And I was like, “okay, I promise.”

In that moment, I felt like god told me clearly the context behind what I’d felt he’d told me a few weeks before.

And he told me more.

It was specific and clear. It gave me direction on what to do with my life in some very key areas.

When I first received what I’ve called a “revelation” for years, I was skeptical, but confirmations came again and again and again, and I was like wow. Ok. How can I deny this?

Since I can’t really go into the details, the important thing to note is that the experience happened, and what I felt god told me at that time changed my life completely–from that day until today, tomorrow, and beyond. It literally has shaped 95% of everything that has happened in my life from then until now.

Anyway, I want that to be exceedingly clear.

Moving on… After losing my job at the school and after coming back from Washington State, I put all my stuff in a storage unit, and I spent the next 9 months of my life living out of my car. It was actually pretty freeing in some ways, and doing so was by choice, so I wouldn’t have considered myself homeless, but it was quite the experience.

I mostly lived off of my meager savings. I did some freelance work as a writer. I made a lot of good friends and went on some fun adventures with my local singles church congregation. I had a great time. I continued doing everything I could to emulate Christ, trying to get rid of everything in my life that in any way was less than the very best it could be.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it was to me to try to be like Christ.

I became closer and closer and closer to god, living by the motto “bring it on” for several years, believing that, if I have god with me, then I can achieve anything that needs to be achieved.

Living by that motto was hard. It left me no excuses. I had to face things. I had overcome. I couldn’t run away… because… well, I had a god supporting me who could do it, so if I gave up, then I was giving up on him, which was dumb because he could do whatever needed to be done, so I knew the fault was with me.

Anyway, for years I lived that way. When life got hard, I said, “Bring it on.” When it knocked me down, I said, “Bring it on.” When I felt beaten to a bloody pulp, I said, “Bring it on.”

It was so hard, but it was so good.

I got so close to god, that I felt like we had regular two-way communication. It was amazing.

I also spent the next several years going to addiction recovery meetings every day or nearly every day. I made friend with the people in those groups as well.

Life was generally good. It was hard, but it was good. Like I said, I felt ever closer to god. I felt very strong spiritual connections, and I had strong spiritual experiences on a fairly regular basis. And even though I was still struggling with addictions, I even managed to get some serious clean time under my belt, not just weeks or months.

All the while, this experience that I’d had in January of 2010 was ever present. The path it had me following was quite out of the ordinary, and despite my closeness to god, on a regular basis, I doubted the experience and went back to god time and time again to be absolutely sure I wasn’t off track. Each time I doubted, I’d start to become fearful, and I’d lose my peace. Each time I got a blessing (I think I’ve explained these?), I was told that god was pleased with me and to keep going. Each time I decided to just trust the experience and keep going, peace returned and I got closer and closer to god.

Years went by this way. Doubt. Fear. Reassurance. Peace. Excitement. It was a regular cycle.

Part of my fear at times, actually quite regularly, was whether or not I even wanted what I’d felt god told me. I was afraid I wouldn’t, and I had compelling reasons for why I thought I might not even want that path as my path in life.

There were times where I even sort of fought against it, ignored it, tried to go another direction, but it never turned out well. It always fell apart, and I always came back.

I the meantime, of course life was still happening outside my own mind. I was asked to be one of the youth leaders in my church congregation (I left the singles congregation and attended a family congregation) I was assigned to assist with the boys ages 12-18. Much like my time as a teacher at the school, those boys became my life. I went to their concerts, sports events, went on camp outs, rafting trips, hiking adventures, etc.

I loved it so much.

I also started working for a new company that was involved in a particular field of online education. When I was first approached to see if I’d have interest in taking the job, I declined. I had dreams of starting a private school and had been working toward those. But I had been living by that motto, and I’d been trying to make the kinds of decisions that would lead me to the experiences that would help me grow most as a person.

I don’t remember how it came about, but I felt an impression that I should take the job. I really didn’t want to, but the impression was strong and clear: If I wanted to grow like I said I wanted to grow, that was the best place for me to be. So, I swallowed the lump in my throat, and with tears streaming down my face, I looked at a picture of Christ I had in my room and said, okay.

That was both empowering devastating at the same time. I was able to look at myself and know that I’d chosen the harder road, but it came at the cost of sacrificing one of my dreams at the time.

It was super hard.

But once I’d taken the job, it was done, and it felt right, and I commuted from Provo to Salt Lake City every day (later it would drop to commuting three days a week, I think). My days basically consisted of two hours of commute, a day of work, and then whatever basketball game, wrestling event, lacrosse game, school play, or concert the kids were in. I drove all over to various high schools to see their events. It was good times.

And such was life for those last of the Provo years. Work. Commute. Youth activities.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

At some point in time, I felt like I should move up to Salt Lake City. It felt like an inspired move, not random, and so I let the people in my congregation know, I let my dad and step mom know, and I bid them all farewell, heading up north for another round, and ending my third and final stay as a resident of Provo, UT.