In March 2013, I was devastated at my own actions and hit my knees in prayer to ask God how to cope with the reality of an abusive relationship and all of the emotional pain as well as legalities that were underway. The answers I felt were to change my life completely.
By the time March of 2014 came around, my life looked much different, although I was still without a home to call my own.
A prayer in an attic sends me to church
The Centralia meetinghouse that I was to call my church home for a while
As I had so many times before, in late February 2013, I had worn out my welcome with my friends in Centralia and had to ask a relative for shelter. That relative was staying with a friend because her home had been broken into and left uninhabitable. I offered to stay in a corner of the attic and spend my days in the house that was without electricity for the most part (except for the bathroom) cleaning and organizing for her.
The sun shone through the attic window and I talked with God. He eventually suggested that I go to church. I began documenting my spiritual journey through a blog now called SisterMaggie.com, and was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a life-changing month.
You'd think that someone in church would realize I was homeless and offer help. However, since I was staying at a house, someplace for people from church to drop me off and pick me up, questions were few and far between. I asked for donations of skirts and kind Sisters donated spares.
Writing in the attic
Journals started to get organized into boxed
Once I started studying the Scriptures, I wanted to write down every impression I received. My journals filled up with notes about my life, my memories, as well as thoughts about Jesus Christ, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and The Book of Mormon.
I started to write poetry, although I didn't understand structure and form, it was an outlet for feelings that I couldn't put into words without the use of metaphor and simile. My talks with God lengthened through the spring, and I began to write letters to friends and family.
Reuniting with my Only Sibling
My brother and I look a bit alike
One of the letters that I wrote was to my younger brother, my only sibling. He was relocating near me and we would have an opportunity to reunite for the first time the previous year when he lost his son. It was healing to get together and share some time as adult siblings without any other family around.
House Sitting
Strawberries needed to be picked...and eaten!
One of the bonus-effects to my church membership was the trust of other people. Seriously. Other church members who got to know me at church during meetings, began to trust me.
One of the friends I met at church asked me to house and dog-sit for her for a week. I was overjoyed. Our dogs got along well and she had a garden that was bursting with berries that needed to be picked and eaten. She gave me permission to eat whatever became ripe and it was a week of heaven for both myself and Athena.
Hanging out on the front porch
Athena watching out for the postman
By July it was too hot to spend much time in the attic during the day. So, for breaks from cleaning and organizing the house, Athena and I would hang out on the front porch.
I dreamed of having a wrap-around porch on a house of my own.
Taking missionaries on hike with Rick
The sun caught my friend just right
Rick had remained in the background during my conversion to a church he was raised in, but remained my friend. When I wanted to take my new missionary friends on an outing into the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, he was the perfect guide to call.
As Rick was showing a group of several missionaries and myself what deer and bear scat was, none of us had any clue that he would be in a hospital fighting for his life before the week was out.
Nursing a friend
Barkley, Rick's Staffordshire Terrier, missed his master horribly
When Rick required a caregiver, both he and his father understood I would be offended if I wasn't asked, so they asked me.
I temporarily relocated to Rick's small travel-trailer with Athena and took care of his dog while he was in surgery, then the both of them when he returned.
It was a few weeks of being able to care for a friend who never allows anyone to do anything for him if he can help it. In so many ways, it felt good to give back a bit of what he had given me so many times when he had offered me a place to stay long after we broke up.
Catching a train to a tech conference in Salt Lake City
A Red Cap snapped a photo of me on my way to my train in Sacramento
When I returned to the attic, I discovered it had become too cold to remain there for the winter. I had retired from my job as a computer programmer years before, and I dreamed of being able to serve my new church in some capacity. An email arrived with information about an "LDS Tech" conference, and I registered free. The only thing I had to worry about was where to stay and how to get there.
Since my fellow ward members never understood I was homeless, the idea that I would just hop on a train with a return ticket, but no idea of where I would be staying seemed crazy to them. For me, it was a change of scenery and an opportunity to learn about my church at its headquarters.
Athena stayed with Rick who was now recovered, and I borrowed a new suitcase and backpack and headed to Utah.
Salt Lake City for my birthday
Salt Lake City Temple and the surrounding buildings from the top of the Conference Center
The tech conference was two days, but those days were right before my birthday. As a gift to myself, I met a friend I had corresponded with online for lunch at the SLC Temple cafeteria.
I stayed with a Relief Society sister who found me through her husband. He drove a taxi and happened to be in the right place at the right time. I was able to stay with them and attend the conference as well as gain a new friend and ride a horse at her parent's home before I left.
All in all, it was a trip out of a dream. Then I took the train back to a town where I would start looking for a place to stay.
Renting a trailer in the middle of mud
A place of my own...or so I thought
When I returned to Washington, I set about trying to find a place to stay. A friend of some friends had a trailer in the middle of a field and offered me the use of that for about a third of my income plus work with their horse, dog, and small children.
I soon discovered that their habit of tying their dog to a post and yelling at me for allowing it to play with Athena was not a situation that was livable for me. It was quickly time to move on.
December 2013 - Renting a room near grandkids
I finally had a place to study and write
I finally found a room to rent, although it was about $200 more than I really thought I could afford, it was near my grandchildren and Christmas was coming.
I quickly made friends with my landlord Marian. She ended up being host to cookie making sessions and my Christmas celebrations with my family. Overall Marian treated me like a daughter.
An itch to travel
A new-to-me van
As January arrived, so did my itch to find warmer weather. I longed to return to my travels and see my friends again. My dear friend Maria had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer since we had last seen one another, and I wanted to see her in person again.
Other friends who had been left out of previous trips nagged my emails and messages. One, in particular, had promised we were meant to be married and he and I now shared a church.
I headed south with many stops planned.
Picking up a promised lightehouse
The lightehouse watched over my dashboard as I slept in the backseat with Athena
Athena and I first stopped near Portland, where we had visited our friend Brenda four years before. She once again offered me the little lighthouse, and this time I took it.
I had slept in a BMW 525, on a street huddled at the end of a bus line, in the attic of a relative, in a rented room and many other places in the four years before, to have my own van seemed like a luxurious apartment on wheels and I was ready to explore the world with Athena.
We headed south from Portland but found we weren't getting the mileage we expected. We headed into Arizona in uncertainty.
February 2014- In Arizona
Athena looking out the van window at Arizona
Athena loved the van. The windows on the sides slid open and her head was permanently out of the back window checking out her surroundings. As we parked in eastern Arizona, she was more than curious as to what was going on and where she would be allowed to go.
Camping into codependency
The van parked next to my friend's residence on his friend's land
When I got to eastern Arizona, I parked and camped next to my friend's camper. It wasn't really his though. He had permission to stay in it on his friend's land for the favor of putting the camper on his friend's land.
My friend had been made homeless when he used his social security back payment to pay for a frivolous lawsuit and party while his apartment was confiscated. I knew none of this until after about two years of marriage. You see, I felt sorry for my friend who was living on a third of my disability income each month, and set about attempting to take care of him by marrying him.
It was one of the worst decisions in my life so far. In February 2014, I found myself married to a man who was as homeless as I was and who had less than half of my disability income.
Heading back to Washington
Camping in the van in the mountains of Nevada
We married in Las Vegas after I met his father in Sun City, Arizona and then his mother in Las Vegas. My daughter and her husband were visiting, so I had a representative of my family meet him, but no one was impressed.
As we honeymooned camping in the mountains outside of Vegas, I dreaded bringing him back to Washington. He decided we had to head there though, and my dreams of travel, although placated by conversation, became distant memories as we followed his plans and schemes now.
Throughout my first four years of being unhoused, I had settled for substandard relationships, but I had never pledged my life to someone. Being a church member now meant casual relationships were off the table, and when we married, we had barely even kissed.
The lack of premarital sex was not an issue, but my codependency with his addictions was. I soon found myself at the receiving end of loud temper tantrums when he ran out of cigarettes and power drinks as we searched for a place to settle down in rainy Washington State.
Read about the next year here now.
