{"chapter_no":"22","chapter_title":"Overcoming the World","book_id":"3","book_name":"Springville","subchapter_no":"0","page_no":"482","page_number":"1","verses_count":0,"total_pages":7,"page_content":"

 <\/p>

Chapter 22<\/p>

Overcoming the World<\/h1><\/p>

 <\/p>

Diane attends college and later marries—Constant travel, a worldly lifestyle, risky investments,
and infidelity lead her husband Dean away from <\/i>the Church<\/i> and results in their divorce—Diane and the
children <\/i>faithfully <\/i>endure the trial through daily family prayers and their faith in God—They join her
parents in the move to Utah and receive a large inheritance.<\/i><\/p>

 <\/p>

 <\/p>

 <\/p>

After graduating from high school, Diane attended a local junior college off and on for a
number of years. She went on several dates during this time and in the years afterward but did
not settle on anyone too quickly. In the Pasadena area, there were many more non-Latter-day
Saint men than Latter-day Saint men available to date, so she took her time in the selection
process. At the age of twenty-eight, she married a fine man from San Diego by the name of Dean
Gardner––a return missionary, in fact. With him, she would have two delightful children. <\/p>

 <\/p>

About three years into their marriage, however, Dean’s job started requiring him to travel
more. As a lead mechanic for a heavy equipment manufacturer, his skills were in demand,
helping the company support customers onsite at various locations across Europe. The money
was very good, and Dean was one of the company’s best mechanics. He was badly needed at the
customer sites, often having his work schedule set weeks or even months in advance.<\/p>

 <\/p>

At first, the couple worked around the travel requirement, still able to see each other on
weekends. But after six months of constant traveling back and forth, Dean was becoming
exhausted, so he arranged to stay over in Europe for a few weeks at a time, returning home for a
similar period of time afterward. Neither of the situations was particularly good, but the new
arrangement was much harder on Diane and the children since they were no longer able to see
Dean regularly at home anymore. This led to arguments, and the hope by Diane that he could
find a job where he didn’t need to travel so much. It seemed to her that his career was taking
center stage in his life and that he had very little time or energy left anymore for the family. <\/p>

 <\/p>

The problem of constant travel was difficult enough, but soon there was an even worse
problem to deal with. In the times recently when Dean had been at home, he had seemed more
stressed, edgy, and even a little nervous about something. He also tended to spend an unusually
large amount of time outside of the home with his friends. Diane soon found out what was going
on. Dean had taken out a large loan—without her knowledge or permission—and invested it into
a speculative business venture with friends. He later explained the investment to her as
something he wanted to do as a surprise that would allow him to soon quit his job and not be
away from the family anymore. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision on his part that his friends
had helped talk him into, but a bad one. His thinking was that Diane would later approve of the <\/p>

idea once it proved successful, realizing only after the fact that he had betrayed her trust in a very
significant way. It was simply wrong to bypass her in the decision whether it proved successful
or not.<\/p>

 <\/p>

As expected, Diane was furious when she found out, thinking to herself, A decision as <\/i>big<\/i>
as this made without <\/i>asking me? W<\/i>hat could he have been thinking to do <\/i>such a thing<\/i>?<\/i><\/p>

 <\/p>

In any event, the family was now stuck with a large financial mess. And rather than solve
their problems, the decision made by Dean had only served to worsen them. The business in
which he had invested wasn’t doing particularly well and would actually need more investment
dollars to survive in the months to come rather than becoming any kind of new income source
for the family. This meant that switching jobs was out of the question since the large loan
payment every month required the income of his high-paying job working in Europe now more
than ever. It was a terrible situation for the family.<\/p>

 <\/p>

In addition, Dean was becoming less and less active at church. Traveling to and from
home on weekends, or when moving between customer sites in different cities, he was often in
transit on Sundays and rarely stayed in one place long enough to attend services. As a result, his
testimony of the Church had become only a shell of its former self. The same could be said of the
couple’s marriage. The worry and stress of everything was taking its toll on Diane; it just seemed
like Dean was never at home anymore, and she was left to manage things on her own.
Nevertheless, she remained faithful to God and a good example of obedience for the children.
Each morning, she gathered her little ones together in family prayer and for regular study of the
scriptures. The daily prayers and scripture study helped to maintain peace in the home—a steady
rudder to navigate through the stormy waters. Overall, Diane just tried to make the best of a bad
situation.<\/p>

 <\/p>

Two years passed in this manner, then suddenly their financial situation worsened further.
This was because the loan set up by Dean and his friends was designed to have lower monthly
payments in the first two years but then increase dramatically in the third year and for the
duration of the loan. Dean’s expectation had been that the business would show a profit after two
years, and the loan had been set up based on that assumption. It was now the beginning of year
three and the start of the larger loan payment brought even greater hardship to the family. <\/p>

 <\/p>

Diane’s reaction was one of amazement. How could her husband have been so dumb? It
had already been difficult enough for her to keep the family together and try to stay sane at the
same time, but now this? <\/p>

 <\/p>

The circumstances were tragic, but she couldn’t help but laugh when Dean came to her to
explain this other interesting aspect of the loan, something he had been afraid to tell her when he
told her about the loan in the first place. <\/p>

 <\/p>

Looking him squarely in the eye, she threw her hands up in the air and said flatly, “That’s
just great, Dean. What’s next? Are there any other surprises about the family finances that you
wish to share with me? What do we do now?”<\/p>

Dean was embarrassed, having no solution to offer for the new problem. He had
apologized sincerely in the last go around, but in so doing, had concealed the larger problem that
was still out there waiting to happen. He had good reason to be sad. He had betrayed her trust a
second time. <\/p>

 <\/p>

To keep up with the larger loan payment, the first action of Dean and Diane was to sell
their comfortable home and move into an apartment. This was aggravating to Diane since neither
she nor the children cared much for the new neighborhood. It was okay, but she felt uneasy
having her children playing outside in the area; there was a lot of traffic, and it just didn’t seem
safe. As for the apartment itself, her littlest daughter had a word for it: “icky.” <\/p>

 <\/p>

But even the move to a smaller place didn’t save enough money to make up the
difference for the larger loan payment. Diane would need to get a full-time job as well. A tragic
cascading effect was in play, where one problem caused another, and then the new problem
caused yet another. With Diane going to work and being away from the house all day long, she
was forced to ask her parents to take care of the children for a few hours each day and pay for a
part-time babysitter to care for them in the afternoons. A full-time babysitter or daycare center––
with all the other expenses incurred by Diane working full time––was found to be too expensive,
almost negating the benefit derived by her working at all. Such was the dilemma they faced. <\/p>

 <\/p>

Her employment also increased the wear and tear on their primary automobile, and the
long commute back and forth to work every day was dead time, creating neither income nor the
opportunity to be with the children. Furthermore, her energy was often spent by the end of the
day, leaving her with very little left in the evening hours to prepare meals or do the other
essential things of the home. It was a bad situation, and Diane hoped for a better solution. The
thought of having someone else caring for her children made her sad; she missed them and
wanted to be at home to spend time with them as their full-time mother. <\/p>

 <\/p>

With all that had happened up to this point, Leonard was absolutely furious with Dean, so
furious, in fact, that he could no longer speak to him anymore. Carina was happy to spend time
with the children every day, but it was a temporary thing, and she could not replace Diane in that
role. She wanted Diane to be happy, and she knew that the dual role of a mother working both
inside and outside the home would not lead to happiness in the end. A temporary work
requirement for a mother caused by an emergency (like the faith-inspiring work done by mothers
entering the factories during World War II) was one thing, but having to do so as a result of one
or more bad financial decisions, or as a means to maintain or lift one’s lifestyle for the long run,
was quite another. The latter situation was where they found themselves now<\/span>. Leonard and
Carina looked seriously at the idea of offering financial assistance, but decided it better for
Carina to help through babysitting rather than provide money which Dean might just throw away
anyway. Thus, among the other problems he had to deal with, Dean had also severely damaged
his relationship with Diane’s family. <\/p>

 <\/p>

Deep down in his heart, Dean was a good man. And he was still very much loved by
Diane and the children. But a series of bad decisions had put him in this predicament. He had lost
his way and didn’t know anymore what he wanted out of life. He had been a good husband; he
was an intelligent and well-educated man; and he was a very hard worker. But as a result of all <\/p>

the arguing back and forth in prior months, he had made yet another costly mistake recently—
deciding to stay over with one of his friends in a London apartment the last few work cycles and
not come home at all. This decision would prove to be the worst one yet and fatal to the
marriage. In London, he started making new friends and going out with them on the town at
night. Somewhat depressed and lonely at times, he began experimenting with beer and other
alcoholic drinks in the downtown pubs. <\/p>

 <\/p>

Dean was a return missionary, still a member of the Church in reasonably good standing,
and, in spite of his frequent travels in recent years, had always been faithful to his wife. But even
that would soon change as well. He met up with a woman who lived in the same apartment
building. She now filled his thoughts completely, and the two of them spent a lot of time together
in the evening hours—a key reason for his decision not to come home in regular cycles anymore.
His situation in life was more confused than ever. <\/p>

 <\/p>

It was at about this time that Leonard and Carina started thinking seriously about selling
their real estate holdings and moving to Utah. Given Diane’s difficult family situation, and
wanting a nice, safe home for their grandchildren, they had several long talks with Diane about
their plans. Diane liked the idea of a fresh start, but both she and Carina really wanted to give
Dean another chance to see if it was still possible to salvage their marriage. <\/p>

 <\/p>

Therefore, as a family (including Leonard, although he was still very skeptical), they
decided to make an offer to Dean with certain conditions. One, if he would quit his job in Europe
and come back to the US to remain permanently, Leonard would help him to cover the loan
payments of his bad investment for as long as needed. He would do this as long as Dean agreed
to sell his interest in the business, recoup anything he could in the sale, put it into savings for the
family, and promise to never do anything like it again. Two, Dean must agree that from this point
forward, he would focus all of his time and energy on getting a new job with minimal travel
requirements (even at less pay), allowing Diane the chance to return home as a full-time mother.
Three, he would agree to join with the entire Hunter family in their move to Utah to establish a
new home there and seek employment in the Salt Lake or Provo area. That was the deal, and a
very good one it was given the circumstances.<\/p>

 <\/p>

In the moments before making the call to Dean, Diane got together with the children and
had a very important family prayer, hoping with all their hearts that Dean would want to come
home and that they all could move out to Utah and be together again. She felt somewhat
awkward in making the call since it had been an unusually long time since they had last talked.
In the past, there had been stretches of a few days where the two might go without talking. When
serious arguments became more commonplace, however, the interval period increased,
sometimes going a week or up to ten days between calls. But after their most recent argument,
Dean had seemed more upset than usual, and it had been more than four weeks since he had last
called, almost like they were separated in a sense.<\/p>

 <\/p>

Making the phone call, she waited a few rings and then heard him answer. <\/p>

 <\/p>

“Finally!” said Diane, sounding upset. “I’ve tried to call you several times in the last few
weeks, but I can never reach you. Why haven’t you called? We’ve been worried sick about you!”<\/p>

 <\/p>

“Uh... I know,” replied Dean, very much unprepared for the call. “I got your messages
and should have called you back. I just get so tired of these long, drawn-out fights every time we
talk.”<\/p>

 <\/p>

There was nothing unusual in his tone or in the words that he spoke, but he did seem
somewhat tired to Diane as she listened. <\/p>

 <\/p>

The two children, seeing that another long argument on the phone was coming, moved
into the more comfortable atmosphere of their bedroom to play. They talked to each other a little
louder than normal to block out the yelling going on in the other room—a coping technique they
had figured out between them. They resumed playing a board game that they had started earlier
that day, but their worried expressions told the story––the pain of the troubled marriage was
falling directly upon them. <\/p>

 <\/p>

“Well, so what are you going to do? Are you going to stay over there forever, or are you
ever planning to come home again?”<\/p>

 <\/p>

Dean paused, not sure how to answer.<\/p>

 <\/p>

Suddenly, Diane’s mind went blank for several seconds, like a stupor of thought had
entered her mind. Gathering her thoughts, she shrugged it off and started to ask again if he was
coming home. <\/p>

 <\/p>

She stopped in mid-sentence—an impression of the Spirit came upon her. She knew right
then that he had been unfaithful to her.<\/p>

 <\/p>

“Oh dear!” said Diane.<\/p>

 <\/p>

“What? What is it?” said Dean, suddenly alarmed and finding new energy to talk.<\/p>

 <\/p>

Diane recoiled inside, and her heart sank, feeling rejection as a woman, as though Dean
had splashed cold water in her face. The sad reality of her life had gone quickly from bad to
awful, becoming simultaneously bitter and horrifying.<\/p>

 <\/p>

“Why? I can’t believe you would do something like that,” said Diane, her face pale from
the shock.<\/p>

 <\/p>

“What are you talking about?” replied Dean. He then started to worry. How did <\/i>she <\/i>find
out<\/i>?<\/i><\/p>

 <\/p>

Panic set in. Like Zeezrom trembling before Amulek, fear came upon him.<\/p>

 <\/p>

“You've been seeing another woman! How could you?”<\/p>

Dean squeezed the phone tightly in his hand, almost angrily, to throw it, and he looked up
at the ceiling in disbelief. He was no longer tired. Adrenaline filled his body. His face became
even paler and his heart was racing. Time and bad choices in life had finally caught up with him. <\/p>

 <\/p>

“Diane, I’m so very sorry!” said Dean, tearful and remorseful.<\/p>

 <\/p>

His confirmation of the situation only deepened the sadness for Diane. That was it, the
last she could take from him. There seemed to be no point in bringing up the idea of all of them
going out to Utah and of her father helping to pay for the loan. He was too distant from her now
and no longer someone she wanted to be around. The emotional end of the marriage had burst
upon her; the formalities of divorce, child custody, financial support, and the legal end of the
marriage would come in the not-too-distant future.<\/p>

 <\/p>

Hanging up the phone slowly, Diane braced herself against the wall. Her world had just
collapsed. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she felt sick to her stomach. Devastated, she
walked slowly towards her bedroom in a daze, leaning upon the wall of the hallway as she went
and bruising her shoulder as she banged it accidentally against the doorframe of the bedroom.
The painful bruise went unnoticed. She closed the door, collapsed onto the bed, and started to
cry. The terrible emotional pains of her teenage years had returned.<\/p>

 <\/p>

Over the next three to four days, Diane suffered through a severe emotional storm, one
her sister Jackie could appreciate and was well familiar with. The storm caused her to lose her
balance inside the small lifeboat she and the children had been floating in and to fall into the
water. There, almost drowning, she struggled to swim and stay afloat amidst the powerful waves.
The pain was extreme, but her children needed her to climb back into the boat––to paddle
onward and lead them.<\/span><\/p>

 <\/p>

After a few days, she started to feel a little better inside. The children were a great
comfort to her, looking to her for guidance as always and helping her to keep in place the daily
routines that kept the family going. In control of her emotions again, she was able to reach forth
her hand to the Savior standing close to her upon the waves and be restored to safety back inside
the boat. A rescue ship would be coming along soon to pick them up. Happier days were on the
horizon. She and the children would be fine<\/span>.<\/p>

 <\/p>

In the months that followed, the details of the divorce were worked out without much
fanfare. An equitable settlement was reached, but most important of all for Diane, she received
full custody of the children.<\/p>

 <\/p>

There would be many unpleasant memories from the divorce, but there was one thing in
particular that would stand out forever in her mind––the absence of the Spirit in Dean and the
other changes in his personality and physical traits that she had noticed in him during those tragic
last days. <\/p>

 <\/p>

As Dean took a leave of absence from his job in Europe to come home and work through
the divorce proceedings, she quickly noticed something odd––his hair had started to show a little
premature graying, almost like he had aged ten years in the last few months. He had barely been <\/p>

able to smile at Diane or the children anymore; it had been difficult to face them and
manufacture a smile knowing the great damage he had caused. His usual sharp dress and well-
groomed look had seemed empty to her, and no longer had an impact. And his countenance had
changed as well; there was little if any spark in his facial expression, and he seemed to become
irritable or stressed easily, even in lighter moments when he might have otherwise been prone to
laugh or smile. This change was evident to Diane and, to a lesser extent, his close friends, but
had been noticeable even to coworkers and customers back in Europe before taking his leave
from them; thus, his effectiveness at work had also been on the decline recently. He had been
less motivated to work, and less social with friends, tending to keep more to himself on most
days. <\/p>

 <\/p>

It had been a very sad and difficult stretch for Diane over the last couple years, but with
the opportunity to move to Utah and the large inheritance she received from her parents (Leonard
and Carina had wisely waited to make any decision on inheritance until after the divorce
paperwork was finalized, though Dean was a much better man than that and obviously would not
have considered himself a party to such a thing regardless), Diane was now sitting pretty—a
pretty good catch. She just needed time to meet the right person.<\/p>

 <\/p>

There was, however, one last matter of business for Diane to conduct with Dean. She had
no further interest in him relationship-wise, but like the boy who had cruelly insulted her so
many years before, she knew it was important to forgive Dean as well... for his benefit as well as
for hers and the children’s. Therefore, six months after settling in Utah, she took a portion of her
inheritance money and contacted him for the purpose of assisting him in paying down his
remaining debt on the loan to get him back on his feet financially. She had no obligation to do
this, but it brought added peace into her life to be kind and help him in this way. <\/p>

 <\/p>

The move shocked Dean, who wondered how she could forgive him and do something so
gracious. He realized once again what a fabulous woman she was and what he had lost. But her
kindness also gave him a new hope in life, motivating him to find his roots in the gospel once
more and to seek a full repentance. <\/p>

 <\/p>

If one looks around, he or she will quickly realize how much suffering there is in the
world and the great work in the gospel there is to be done. Thus, someone like Dean who has
made mistakes can quickly find peace and happiness in his life again by beginning anew and
immersing himself all day long in the service to others, bringing joy to everyone he meets. <\/span><\/p>

 <\/p>

As for Diane, she found joy in the knowledge that her final act of kindness to Dean would
be a key factor in starting him again on the road to success and happiness. It was also a way for
her to find peace as she closed out a very sad episode of her life. By following the example of the
Savior, she had learned how to overcome the world<\/span>.<\/p>"}