I Lost Everything, Until I Found Myself Again Through God

It's amazing how life brings you to the present moment. We get so hung up on everything else. But it's beautiful when you get to look back and, you know, hindsight's always 20 20. And what I've tried to do, as life has taught me so many lessons and God's put me in so many places, is to be present and be conscientious of what's occurring at the moment. We get lost in it. When things happen in the way that we don't want them to happen, that's where we get frustrated, where we get depressed, we get sad, we get lost, we get angry, we separate.

Wait, before you share that, why don't you tell me a little bit about your story? Can you bring us back to those difficult years?

Going back to it all. Life had been. Has been always such a blessing and perfect. You know, married young, married Suli, love of my life. We were married three and a half years and then started trying for kids in Manuel Antonio. I had a great job at the bank, financial advisor, been there, been a financial advisor 13 years, traveling the world, had my house dog business that opened up for Suli to manage that, you know, just blessed with infinite experiences and blessings. Two great, healthy, beautiful parents that adored me and have raised me and continue to be with me and give me love and support. Two incredible sisters that have guided me through my youth and through growing and in their experiences, have always supported me. Life has always been a constant blessing. When life took a turn and didn't work out the way that I wanted, you know, that's where I found my cliff, or what I perceived to be my cliff.

How did life take a turn?

All right, you keep extracting all that. So working at the bank, phenomenal position, you know, great life, making a very good money, everything. Well, I pursued an opportunity to do what I thought was make more money, you know, and. And be a little more independent and get out of corporate. The corporate world in corporate America, which I got pretty tired of. And what I followed was torment in disguise, if you will, perceived to be a great opportunity. It ended up being a. Just a major fraud where I went from going out and doing whatever I wanted to. All of a sudden I'm getting calls from authorities and things that never in my life or my wildest dreams that I think would be happening in that process. We are pregnant with Mac, our first son. Thinking to myself, okay, you know, while I'm going through this entire torment of my professional life, which was upside down, you know, I left the bank, I went to Go work for this company. You know, the bomb dropped on this not being what it was supposed to be. I was in limbo. And without knowing it, God provided me an angel, which I was unaware at that moment. Sitting down with a friend of mine. We're having lunch. He worked in the aviation industry. I used to work with him in finance. He, he was actually the financial advisor that hired me as an assistant. So we had long lasting, a long term relationship. A very good friend of mine, I just needed a job at that point because right now I was at zero. Pregnant wife, house bills, the whole thing. And you know, SUNY wasn't working at that time, so I took a job with him. I didn't know anything about aviation. All I knew is you got in a plane and when you got off you were somewhere else. You know, that's all I knew about planes. But I just needed to do something and, and my pride did not allow me to go back into finance and banking. Your husband, a guy that I think you like a little bit obsessed with him. If anybody that knows Betsy knows that she's absolutely obsessed with a line which I am also secretly. But hey, my brother, he had gotten me an interview and an office and a job, like in an instant, without thinking twice about it. But I just couldn't go through with it knowing everything that was happening in the background. And I would have never wanted for his name to ever be associated with me if something really went south and.

In the background there were some legal, legal issues.

Correct. That's what I meant. That's what I meant. Something to ever, you know, state his name or associate him with me in the event something bad would happen. So I humbly and gratefully turned down the offer and just kept on with this job of making just enough to get by barely in the aviation world. So struggling with that financially. Bill's coming in. Very unpleasant moments in life, you know, things start to weigh on you and that roof gets heavier and heavier as you try to hold it up and hold it up and hold it up. And being the person I've always been, never been one to complain. Definitely not in my nature to be asking for help for things, figuring I'm going to take care of this. And I would sit and I'd pray and I'd cry, like begging God, listen, take this away from me. Just let this pass already. You know, I've never done it. I've never done anything that I perceive to be so bad in this world that would cause these things to be a part of my life. Experiences. And, you know, I kept praying and asking and praying for asking as a little kid. You know, I thank my mom for my faith. I was raised Catholic my entire life. As you get older, you start recognizing, realizing what you do believe what you don't. And, I mean, I am unapologetically Catholic. I love God, I love Christ, the Holy Spirit, all of it. It's just. It's the truth. It's not that I'm convinced it's the truth, but in that truth, where I said to myself, you know, I've accumulated all these brownie points over the years that I've never cashed in, I figured, hey, look, this is my. This is my petition. I need help. I need you to get me out of this. But I need it now because life is happening. I have a baby on the way, and it wouldn't come. And it wouldn't come. So things continue. Max due date was January 4th, which is also my nephew's birthday, but his Due date was January 4th. He ends up being born November 10th. Get a call early in the morning. You rushed over, you helped Suli prepare, have her realize that, you know, baby's not coming in three seconds. He's gonna come in a few hours. So get prepared, get ready, take a shower, do all that stuff. When we get to the hospital, doctor tells us, I gave him a story that I was struggling with the car seat, try to get in the car, get out of the box, and he goes, it's fine that he did all that, but he's not going home today, tomorrow, the day after he was born at 32 weeks and can't leave the hospital day before 35 plus, has to meet all these milestones. So there's atomic bomb number two. You know, from my professional financial standpoint, had one bomb drop in April of 2010, and then November, which is the celebration of my greatest gift, which is my son being born. My first child. It came with a lot of anchors on it, or so I thought. And it was overwhelming. And I. I remember when he was born, we rushed out of the. Of the delivery room, and in the delivery room were, like, four doctors and nurses. They just grabbed them and just took off to the nicu. I remember just chasing him through a hallway. It opened up. The whole family was there, and I couldn't celebrate with anyone. I just had to follow them through, intubated the whole thing, the whole story. And I just remember just standing against the wall by myself and just sobbing, wondering what is going on? Like, what did I ever do? Like, whatever happened that my life took a turn. That all of a sudden everything is collapsing and nothing is holding up at all. Fast forward. Years go by as we are, well, fast forward and four months later we find out that Suli's pregnant with Zoe, our daughter, which was greatest angel God ever sent us. Weren't planning for it, mind you. We got home with Mac after five and a half weeks in the NICU with heart monitors and everything. The last thing we're thinking of is when are we going to plan for the next child, right? But God sends and we receive. So Zoe comes and was the brightest light that our dark cave of a home needed at that moment. Because as much as I was feeling everything, Suli was feeling everything as well. And you know, for many, many years, I discredited her for having gone through this as much as I have because I just did. The woe is me, you know, I'm the one struggling. I'm the one whose career is in the shambles. I'm the one who lost my job. I'm the one who has not thinking that she's going through it as well, although she's been my rock the entire time. But I digress. So years continue to go by. Finances didn't get any better. You know, I'm in a brand new industry, don't know how to navigate, don't know really how to make money. It's not my company. That company ends up going under after two years. I get contracted by a client and was with them for about a year and a half. That wasn't going well either. It's not like I was doing fantastic, you know, but just enough to get by. Just enough to get by. When I was never used to just getting by, you know, I was always accustomed to thriving and succeeding and finding, you know, my next challenge and escalating and growing and being on top of my world, not anybody else's, but being on top of mine. And, you know, God served me a lot of humble pie as time went on. So I lost a lot of my faith. I lost a lot of my faith not in belief, but in trust. I believed, still believed in God. I wasn't going to mass. I wasn't praying because I felt all my prayers were falling on deaf ears. It was very disheartening. It was very, very overwhelming to feel neglected and abandoned. And what I learned as the years went on is that all those thoughts were just mine. It wasn't reality. It got so bad that, you know, my home life was affected by it because it depleted my Drive. Why am I working so hard? Why am I pushing so hard if nothing's coming from it? I've prayed and I prayed and I've prayed and I've asked God every single day, just take this away, like, put. Don't let my family suffer because they're suffering directly because of me. Not even indirectly, but just directly. And, you know, it affected everything. It affected my relationship with my wife to where, you know, we went through some very dark times. And I would pray and I would pray and I would pray. And then, you know, one day we had a very unpleasant conversation, you know, Suli and I. And that was almost like a wake, a wake up, an awakening for me, if you will. Because as beaten as I was and as just devastated and I had no gas in the tank, I do thank God for one quality that, that I recognize I have in myself is that I will never quit. And that is, call it the Holy Spirit, call it just the blessing that God's given me, but I will never quit. I can't. It's not in my nature to quit. It's just something that I want and hope. And I pray that my kids have it, that it's instilled in them. Because life's going to come at you, it's going to throw everything at you, but you can't quit. You can't quit, you know, so long as you have a chip and a chair, you're still at the table, you're still playing. You're in the game. And my chip was the lung. They aired my lungs, you know, and the fact that my wife is still at home with me, that my children are still at home with me, that my friends are still around me, that determination to get back what I had lost, what I never realized that what I had lost was myself. I wasn't losing my wife, I wasn't losing my kids. I didn't lose my job. I lost myself. And I lost myself because I lost my focus on God. You know, as years have gone by, you know, I've been fortunate to really stay present and stay focused on my purpose, which is getting to heaven. Because that's what I want for my wife, that's what I want for my kids. And in that purpose, it's living the best life I can here on earth. And that best life here on earth is living as Christ like, as I can, living the way Christ taught us.