The next major steppingstone in my life led to a splinter group of RLDS faith. When visiting my mother, who had moved back to Northern California, I encountered a book reputed to be further revelation from God given outside the RLDS structure. My experience reading this book converted me to the religious ideas it embraced and started up eight years of living in an intentional religious community in southern Iowa.
This particular religion claimed my heart and soul for the eight years I was a part of it. To live the religion, I spent those eight years with no running water or electricity. We lived a communal homestead life with few modern conveniences. Hand sawing firewood to heat our homes and cook our food. Horse farming and livestock to generate our food. It was a very hard life but felt to be worth the ability to live my religious convictions.
While in this community I also met and married my now ex-wife. I fully expected to spend the rest of my life in this community. I was wholly devoted to the life and religion. I hoped to raise my family there and achieve my dreams of being a husband and father.
Unfortunately, conception didn’t seem to be in the cards for me and my now ex-wife. At the same time the community’s religious life became fraught. The religious leaders of the group began to disagree with the implementation of the faith. The all-things common living concept started to devolve into some community members being “more common” than others. Children who grew up in the community came of age and started questioning the way things were being done. Adults heard the young people’s concerns and started questioning as well. The beautiful, loving message of the faith became distorted as the main religious figure head became strict and exacting in interpretations to attempt to rain in the opposition.
After eight years wholeheartedly dedicated to this faith I decided I needed to leave. These eight years occurred during the time in my life from the age of 26-34. For most men this time would have been the primary time to create a career and professional life. So at 34 I started over again. I returned to university and finished my degree. I was ready to take the world by storm with my wife. Then 2 years after we left the group she showed up one day and said it was over and she was moving in with her sister. A few months later she sued for divorce, and I seemed to have nothing to show for the last 10 years of my life.
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