Facebook has a “Memory” feature which shows you what you were doing some year(s) ago. This morning I got a “memory” from one year ago (Feb. 6, 2017). To set the stage, about 3 weeks earlier, I’d made an offer on a cute little house just southwest of Downtown Salt Lake City. I was well qualified for it, had a decent contracting job as a trainer and writer (which helped me qualify to get the loan to buy the house), and my son was helping me get the mortage. Slam dunk, no brainer. BUT, about the last part of January, my contract suddenly ended. In otherwords, I was unemployed. As a result, the mortgage — which had been conditionally approved — was “unapproved.” And poof, just like that, the house of my dreams (I thought … or at least a cute house I could hold writer classes in), was someone else’s dream house. About a week later, Feb. 6th 2017, I wrote this (then read what I wrote today, afterwards!)
February 6, 2017 · Springville, UT ·
Two weeks ago I was certain I was going to move out of my small apartment into a 3-bedroom little Brick House with one previous owner, less than a couple hundred yards away from the International Peace Garden in Salt Lake City. Instead, last week, the sale fell through and I’m moving out of my apartment downstairs into one room basement apartment. Moral of the story? Life doesn’t always go the way you thought it would. Some may say I brought this on myself. One thing I can say is that I’m grateful for a roof over my head, lots of food in the fridge and freezer, hot running water, a car that works, and children who talk to me, a sense of what I’m about. No, it’s not where I thought I would be. In a lot of respects, it’s better.
This is what I wrote today, Feb. 6, 2018 — What a difference a year makes!
Wow. This memory (see above) blows me away. Why?
One year ago I was pretty sad about not getting the Salt Lake City house. And I was no longer working with Tom-Sircy Maggio (and others) at Eccovia Solutions! But I knew that Heavenly Father had a plan. HE told me things were going to be okay.
So what has happened in that year, from February 2017 until today? Shortly before that first posting, when everything was all falling apart, I started going to the LDS Temple. I decided to go for 100 days in a row. Then I got the impression, which I acted on, to go up to Seattle and work on selling my house in Kirkland. Through a lot of hard work from Camilla Kuhns and her mother, and thanks to realtor Erin Harold, we sold the house in June for significantly more than it was going to get when we first looked at putting it in the market in March and April.
During that time, I also worked a couple hours a day on my book (dealing with my “falling away” from the LDS Church, and how and why I repented and returned. But that’s another story). Thanks to Wendy Tinker, my friend, I had a place to stay to work on the house and the book. I finished the rough draft, and I’m now working on the final edits and getting it ready to be at least an ebook.
Then I felt prompted to go out to Wisconsin to be with my dad Gene L. Kuhns and my mom Anna Kuhns, and work with them. I did that. I also felt like I should cancel my LDS Planet online dating subscription, but not before it expired on July 3rd. So I set that cancellation in motion.
On July 1st, I met a woman online (yes, on LDSPlanet!), a writer (MarniePehrson.com) with published fiction and nonfiction books, someone who did social media consulting, someone who held writers retreats and other events. We started talking. We resonated.
As I talked about how I was thinking of maybe buying a property in Wisconsin where I could hold writers’ retreats, she sent me a picture of her former house, where she had always dreamed of holding writers retreats. The house looked pretty interesting, and so did she. I figured even if we wouldn’t date, we had business interests in common, so I should pursue that.
I decided to meet her, and in early August flew down to Chattanooga. There, I saw her former house, near the Chickamauga National Battlefield. Unexpectedly, it had just gone on the market (it had been foreclosed months earlier). I decided to make an offer on the house, figuring even if we didn’t work out as a business partnership or as couple, it would still be a great property to own. I made an offer, and ended up getting the house. 
It is nearly 800 square feet bigger than the one I was going to buy in Salt Lake. Instead of being several hundred yards away from a 40 acre Park, it is 200 yards away from a 5600-acre National Battlefield. Instead of being on a small quarter acre lot surrounded by inner-city neighbors, it is on nearly a 2-acre lot surrounded by even more acreage and one neighbor about a hundred yards away. Instead of looking out an old small living room window at a neighbor’s chain link fence, trashy house trailer with two large barking dogs, or looking out my back window at the backyard of a small run-down house with garbage heaped everywhere, I look out my living room window at red cedar trees, Georgia pines, and tall oak and hickory trees on a hill sloping down toward a sod farm. Out the bedroom windows, or out my office window, I look across a gently sloping yard full of wildflowers
Wildflowers and my rural Northwest Georgia house – Sept 2017
and I bought it — all cash because I’d sold the house in Seattle — for much less than I would have paid for the house in Salt Lake.I moved out of a 1 bedroom room in a house in central Utah, to a 5-bedroom home in Northwest Georgia in late August.
Through the course of the autumn and winter, Marnie L Pehrson and I continued to develop a business relationship. We held a writer’s retreat with Denise Lasswell Webster, and I helped Marnie with a Women’s Conference in Southern California.
And we dated. Although the house and the property were awesome, I wanted to see if there might be more.
And there is.
One year to the day after I wrote the first post above, I am 4 days away from being married for forever in the Nashville LDS temple to a woman I love, and who loves and adores me. We resonate not only emotionally and business-wise, but spiritually, mentally, and in many other ways.
Heavenly Father amazes me! I sing praises to Him. I am beyond belief grateful not only for what has happened, but what will happen. The house, the property, the relationship all allow me, allow us, to have a place of Peace, of Refuge, of Solace and Solitude, a place where we can invite our children and grandchildren, our relatives, our friends, our neighbors, and friends we haven’t met yet, to relax, to learn, to explore, to write, to create, to observe, to feel, to connect, to heal, to find peace, health, happiness and joy. Rather than living near the International Peace Garden, I can create my own!
One year ago, I would not have thought any of this was possible. I didn’t even think of it! The vision had not yet unfolded. He simply told me step-by-step what to do. In fact, if you look at the story from both of our perspectives, it seems so incredible that if we wrote it in a novel, nobody would believe it. Yet here we are.
God is good … all the time.
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