Who am I?
The answer to that question has changed over the past few years. If you were to ask me now I would say, first and foremost, that I am a husband and a father. I love my family very much and caring for them has become my primary ambition in life. As an extension of that, I am a dentist and a student. I think that I am a part of one of the greatest professions out there and I thoroughly enjoy every aspect of my job, from the business to the clinical to the academic.
I would also call myself, for lack of a better word, a fun-lover. I think that life has so much to offer and I want to get out and experience all of it. In the scriptures we learn that “man is that he might have joy.” I like that. If life is what you make it then I am determined to make my life a good one.
Finally, I would give you the Primary answer that I am a child of a loving heavenly father who wants what is best for me. I feel that my relationship with my father in heaven has been strengthened greatly as I have become a father myself, and He has taken a very important part of my life. I have learned through experience that I am happiest when I follow the guidelines he has set for this life and I find joy in striving to live by them.
And if you put all of this together I could condense it into one very succinct answer.
I am a Hazard.
So there you have it. That is what I would say. But in the context that I am writing this, I think that there is a more relevant question to be asked.
Who was I in 2004? Before The Hazard Chronicles began. Before I even knew who Rachel Almond was.
And while my answer would be similar, I think that my priorities were a little bit different back in those days. In those days I had no real responsibilities except for to myself and I enjoyed the spontaneity and novelties that life presented. I was very much a rock climber and a kayaker. Ever since I was in high school I have carried a list with me in my wallet that contains my life “to-do list”. I think it is relevant that at this time over half of my list was comprised of climbs to do and rivers to run.
The summer before I went to BYU I spent three months living out of a pick-up truck with Donny. Every day we were either kayaking a river or climbing a mountain. We slept on the road and then woke up only to do more of the same. It was a fun lifestyle. I had practiced hard to become a very good climber and kayaker and the level that I was participating in these activities was far beyond what would be considered “normal.” It was a lifestyle that I enjoyed and these activities really did help to define who I was.
There is also a story behind my being at BYU.
I returned home from my LDS mission in 2003. The two years I spent in Brazil allowed me to really develop into the person I would become. Free from any preconceived ideals or attitudes from family or friends I was able to truly grow into myself. When I arrived at home these people interpreted this growth as change. And in a way it was, but I see it more as a development of what was already there.
As I lived at home again I noticed myself becoming more and more the person that “they” wanted me to be (or at least the person they thought I was)- and it wasn’t me. Also, while I had always been an independent person, I had truly learned to embrace this independence while living on my own for two years in another country. These things together made it very difficult for me to live at home. They didn’t know it, but my existing friends and family were crushing me. I had to leave.
So I applied to BYU. They didn’t want me.
So I applied again. They still didn’t want me.
So I went there as a “visiting student.” It is a program they had set up where I could go for a summer semester and take classes that would transfer back up to BYU-Idaho when I was through. It was a way to get out of the house and allow me to stretch a little bit. Once I was down there I did very well in my classes. When I went to transfer my records back to BYU-Idaho the councilor noticed this and invited me, on the spot, to stay as a permanent student at BYU. And I, on the spot, accepted his invitation. The new semester would start in two weeks and I would have to find a job and housing and register for classes, but that was okay because I was in.
I like to think that there was some divine intervention involved with this chain of events. By that time I had already met Rachel and our relationship had started to form, but we were both hesitant to take it to the next level because of the fact that I would be leaving. If this had happened then I am sure my life would be very different today.
So that is the back-story on who I was, and these are the circumstances that led up to the most significant moment of my life.
The moment I met Rachel.
-Here are some pictures of the kayaking trip I did earlier that summer before I went to BYU
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