by Lisa Davies

Created on: October 21, 2008   Last Updated: January 18, 2012

Should we focus less on material wealth and more on quality of life? This is an age old question and it goes all the way back to one of the oldest book published and most read - the Bible.

I am going to leave politics and religion out of this article though, for obvious reasons. This question is a question of personal choice, circumstances and perspectives. With this said, the answer is also individual. However I am prepared to give you my personal opinion, part of it being based on my past personal experiences.

I think I will start out with that, my personal experience is a prime example: I married at a very young age, I was 21 years old, with a 2 year old daughter out of wedlock, when I met my husband. I had very little education at the time beyond high school. I was working two jobs at the time, a full-time day job in a nursing home as a CNA, and then working for my best-friend's Father, waiting tables part time. I had no family to help me and my daughters Father was very physically abusive to me, not to mention the mental abuse on a daily basis. This was long before the laws changed that now help the battered woman appropriately, or at least when compared to what the laws were 20 years ago. Life was difficult at the time to say the least.

However, I became a true life Cinderella in our modern day. I met my husband through a friend. She rented from him and asked me to run with her to pay her rent. She also informed me that he had a huge back yard pool that he never uses, and had offered her an open invitation for anytime she felt like swimming. Needless to say - we went!

He was somewhat quiet, mysterious in ways, older,( much older than I - I was 20 and he was 38), educated, very intelligent, it didn't take much conversation to realize that. I was beautiful, young, and out going - I had never met a stranger and loved all mankind alike. Oh and did I forget to tell you that he was financially independent? Oil and Gas, and ranching, all of which he could do from home by phone.

Because of his mystery and being very introverted, he soon became a challenge, and not long after that a mission. This was in April 1985, we were married December 14, 1985.

He was a great dad, we had two children together eventually. He was a wonderful provider, I had anything I wanted and we never fought or had arguments. However, after 6 years of marriage, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't happy, and wasn't sure why. I just felt like I was running around looking for this missing

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