The RM

A friend of mine's kid came home from his mission recently, and I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with him while we painted his dad's kitchen. It occurred to me, as he insisted on listening to MoTab and praying over the $.99 Wendy's burgers, that I could never go back to being a missionary.

Let me back up: I came home after 10 months serving in the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission for health reasons, meaning I suffered a nervous breakdown. I came home and had to go into therapy for the things I ha
d experienced. Despite that, the window was always open to return and finish serving my mission. It's weird that it didn't occur to me until about six years and a marriage later that the window could ever be closed, and due to the residual effects my breakdown has had on my psyche even to this day I've never been tempted to go back, but now that the window is officially closed to serve as an Elder with a little name badge in a crummy apartment with another Elder, it makes me wonder what might've been. It also makes me question my motives into why I went in the first place, as well as why I left.

I don't regret serving. Not in the slightest. I met some dear friends there, including my adopted grandmother Sam, and my once roommate now dear friend and fellow Game of Thrones enthusiast Nate, and I can't not mention my buddies who I rarely see Elder Abraham and Elder Bracken. My first question is who else would I have met? Would I have found other families in need of a geeky Mormon kid to show up? Maybe I would've met some companion and formed some sort of eternal bond of brotherly love Scrubs style. Of course there's a flip side to the coin. I may've met more companions with whom I would want to wring their scrawny necks, or more families that made me want to run to the nearest clinic to get tested because I was foolish enough to sit on their couch. So I guess that's just a moot point.

I guess the biggest question I can ask is: Who would I have become? After I got home from my mission I met several people who have made some major impacts to my life, and taken other relationships to whole new levels of intimacy, including with my wife Katie. From going to college after my mission I met Neil and Tyler, who helped make my wedding actually work, and help me to this day with the trials in my life. Would I have them if I had stayed or gone back? Would they have become friends with that Joe? In the here and now I can't imagine my life without them, or without Spencer, or TJ, or Stephen, or Stu, or Bryan. or Sholom or a hundred other people I consider dear to me.

With that I have to wonder about the reason why I came home: My then deteriorating mental state. I had the option of staying but decided to go home and get treatment there, but if I had stayed, would I have been able to recover or would it have become worse? It's taken years to reach the level of stability I'm at now, which some days admittedly isn't much. I wonder if the stress of still being there would've been too much, and how far things would have progressed. Did I save my own life or did I ruin it?

Unfortunately without a Flux Capacitor, or as my more up-to-date friends would say, a TARDIS, these questions will never be answered until the next life when all truth will be freed. Despite it's flaws I love my life now. My wife and I are very happy to come to our oddly shaped home to the smell of the Crock Pot making Swedish Meatballs, sitting in our spots and watching Criminal Minds. I'm just curious what could've happened.

-JOE