I'm ALIVE and STILL in love.

I am somewhat reflective today as it is Jon and my 14Th anniversary. We also dated two and a half years before that. Words cannot express the range of emotions and experiences these years have brought.

How do you put into words a relationship like that? I am not going to say it has all been a bowl full of cherries, because it hasn't. It has been beautiful, rocky, and even torturous at times. Jon and I were thrown into a lot the first few years of marriage. Things that have ripped and torn at our very foundation, shaking our relationship like an earthquake. As I sit and let myself remember, tears flow freely from a place I rarely let be exposed. A place I keep really hard things locked up and safe in the back of my mind. I am grateful for this ability because it is the only way I have made it through some of the hardest things we have trudged through together, side by side.

When Jon and I were dating he ran a landscaping business. Jon had started this company when he was eight years old. He put blood, sweat, and tears into this business as he went through school. His parents would loan him money that he was expected to pay back, and he did, every penny.


 I remember seeing the cable bill even listed on his "bill" and having to chuckle, but his parents made him who he was. He was expected to be responsible and work hard. He once bought a five acre piece of land on the top of a mountain. He paid on it for a long time until one month he didn't budget well and was short $105.00. Jon's dad wanted to teach him a lesson and let the bank repo the property. To this day, his dad kicks himself for not paying the payment and just letting Jon think the bank took it away. Needless to say, Jon learned another hard lesson.


 When he was 17, his girlfriend in high school got pregnant. As you can imagine this was hard for everyone to deal with. It is a very young age to try and process the reality of having a baby. Jon himself was given up for adoption when he was a baby because his biological mother and father were 13 and 14 years old. Jon was quite stressed at the thought of starting a family so young. His cousin tried to help and told him that smoking would help him calm down. Unfortunately Jon believed him and started to smoke. I am sure he had no idea how much pain this would cause himself and his loved ones at the time. When I met him he didn't even let me know for several months that he smoked. He would take a shower, brush his teeth, and any other trick he could think of to hide it from me and because we weren't kissing, I was oblivious. When Jon was confident I had fallen in love with him, he let the bomb drop. I assured him I would stick by his side and help him quit....I had no idea my promise would be so hard!


I helped him build his business as much as I could. He was now building retaining walls. Jon found out he could build them and make a good profit so he did a few bids, got a taker and ran to the library to check out a tutorial video on how to build a retaining wall! Unbelievable. This guy sets a goal and makes it happen...no questions asked.

We were married on March 1st 1996. About three months later we received a letter in the mail inviting us to court to work through custody issues for my step daughter. That was a very long and drawn out experience to say the least. We had our first chance to learn about the court system, lawyers, and paperwork. In the long run it was worth going through

it to have a set schedule.

A few months after that Jon had surgery on his back. He had back problems starting in football his Junior year in high school. He tried many things to help the pain and this was another one. The surgery was supposed to deaden the nerve endings in his back because having surgery on the disks in his back didn't make sense at his age. They thought it would only make it worse. It was "an easy, same day surgery that would help his pain." Unfortunately when the doctor put the needle in his back (comparable to an epidural) he punctured the epidural sack and the fluid drained causing spinal headache (I think that is what they called it) Needless to say it is VERY painful. The doctor came to our house to check on Jon because he was so worried.


 This was about the same time the landscaping had started up for Spring. Jon wasn't as on top of things as usual with court and his surgery going bad. He worked through the summer and had the luck of dealing with a few really dishonest clients that knew we were a small company. They used this in their favor to refuse payment because


 "We cut blocks and he shouldn't have to pay for cut blocks that weren't on his wall." 

We plugged along through the summer and were blessed to have our first baby in August. We were so happy and loved her so much. She was a beautiful baby and so easy going. We had to try and wake her to eat because she slept so much!

The first of November Jon went into Payless pharmacy to have a prescription filled. The pharmacy was very busy that day and to our detriment Jon's prescription was miss filled. We had no idea. Jon took the pills prescribed for 29 days. 29 days of HELL.


 Jon was doing things that he never had in the 3 years I had known him. He had crashed several of his landscaping trucks and spent much of his time running away to a pioneer cabin in Scipio. He looked high most of the time...because he was. I would try and help him but I didn't know what to do. I had a brand new baby and felt helpless. He would call and say he would be home in an hour and he wouldn't return until the next day! When he walked into the house I asked him where he had been and he would say something like, 


"WELL, IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE MAD, I AM JUST LEAVING AGAIN!"


 I couldn't believe my ears! He had never treated me bad. We had many friends, but found out who our true friends were during this time in our life. Jon's dad drove to Scipio many times to check on him. He would find him sitting outside at 3 in the morning in the freezing cold, or stuck on the lake all alone. His tractor was sunk in the lake and his guns from hunting were laying everywhere. All of the craziness had me thinking I would be divorced with a baby at the age of 20. The thought made me sick, but I thought he had gone crazy.


At the end of the very long month Jon was standing in our kitchen. I looked over as I saw him taking the last pill from his prescription and it HIT me. I asked to see the pill and commented that the pill looked different than the prescription he had taken the month before. I told him to call the doctor so he did. The pharmacist asked Jon to describe what the pill looked like. After he did he let Jon know that he needed to call poison control and that he had taken the wrong pill in triple the dose!


We spent the next several months bringing Jon off the drug because if we did it too fast it could kill him. During this time we were still in court with Rooz. The opposing counsel tried to prove Jon an unfit dad and use the situation to take more time (than the minimum) away. Jon was still smoking, and under a lot of stress. During these months he usually did snow removal but because we had lost all of our equipment and employees we couldn't. We had no income, and an immediate debt of about $250,000 because our business was a sole proprietor and the business debt became our responsibility.


Jon felt defeated in every way. I remember one night he had left feeling so sad. He came home late at night and knocked on the door. I didn't hear him, so he went and had to sleep at one of our friends barns. He stayed for several days and I was so worried. While he was there he got a piece of plastic shoved into his hand and had to come home to get surgery.
I guess it was kind of lucky in a way.

Soon we had bill collectors camped all over our front lawn wanting money. They banged on the door at all hours and called my phone from their cell phone as they stood on the front porch. They wouldn't leave me alone! I had a new baby and felt so alone. I remember crossing the Provo river with my baby once to get some milk at the seven eleven because all of the people were harassing me in my front yard. We lived in a one bedroom TINY home so I couldn't get away. I still hate answering the phone or doing paperwork because of this experience. Eventually Jon's dad had a good friend that was also a lawyer who offered to take our case to court. We were in court for 4 years with Payless before we finally got just enough money back to pay back Jon's dad for the money he paid to our creditors.

After 22 months of this I had my second baby. Life was still really hard, but we loved our baby. One week later we found out we either needed to raise our niece or she would be going into state custody. She had been abused in several ways and needed a home. So we took her in, into our tiny home without food and nowhere but the couch for her to sleep on. Counseling started 2 times a week with her and an additional need for lawyers to get her step dad into prison. Add that to the lawyer we had for our bankruptcy lawyer and we had 4 lawyers at the same time. Luckily we never actually went bankrupt because of Jon's parents.

My heart beats so fast as I type all of these hard things. I can't even list them all because some are too private for a public blog. I am a completely different person because of my experiences and so is Jon. We went to marriage counseling once because we felt defeated. The counselor put his pen down about an hour into the session (remember this all happened after only 3 years of being married). After we were finished he told us to go home. He told us that if we were still together after all of these things that NOTHING could rip us apart.

And we believed him.

Obviously there are many years of recovery and additional life stresses that added onto our book of life after these first years but they taught us a lot of lessons. I will never look at someone with food stamps the same.


 I will be EVER grateful for my food and shelter. I will never take my marriage for granted. I will never feel entitled to any blessing I get, rather that I need to work the rest of my life to deserve all the help Heavenly Father has given us to dig our way out. I will ALWAYS try to give to ANYONE in need whether it be food, shelter, or a listening ear. We love each other more because of it all. I didn't make it through this with anyone else, we made it through together...some how, some way. And we will be together for eternity. I feel so blessed to be able to say we have been married 14 years. To some this isn't long, to me it is a triumph that was impossible. Happy Anniversary Jon, Happy because we made it and are still making it day by day. Happy because I love you and always will!


Happy Anniversary...

Here is a quick run down in a magazine article we were recently featured in:


UV50 Magazine