Three years ago, when I was pregnant with Gavin, I went on a spiritual retreat called the Walk to Emmaus. It was a weekend where you left everything behind and drew closer to God. We sat through a series of talks and were pampered and waited on. The lay people were there to serve you all weekend. It was a weekend of tears and discovering who you are and what you mean to God. It was by far one of the best weekends of my life. Toward the end of the weekend, we were given love letters written to us by our family and friends. I was in the closet today and stumbled across my love letters. I haven't read them in a long time. I have really been stressed and bogged down with life the passed few months. We have been through so much the passed few years, Carley is misbehaving at school, and now that I have devoted the passed few months to opening the scrapbook store, I haven't had much time to myself or had much quality time with my family. It makes me wonder if I made the right decision, opening the store. My soul purpose was to began building a business so that when my mom retired from helping me with the daycare, I could leave the daycare business all together. With all of the work getting the store ready to open, custom orders, advertising, planning the Grand Opening and other events, printing flyers, the mailing list, staying in contact with customers, recruiting new customers, bookkeeping and repairs to the store, etc., I have come to realize that I now have two full-time jobs. So in the midst of worrying about all of this, I really felt like I was going to lose it. And lose it, I have. I have lost myself. I don't recognize the person I have become. All of the family trouble, death of my Dad, and now this has made me someone that I am not. I really felt like a couple of days ago that I needed to go get meds for anxiety and stress. So as I was saying, I stumbled across my love letters in my closet and sat down right where I was and began to read them. I began to cry as I read letters from friends, daycare parents, my family, my husband. I read about how I inspired a daycare parent to be a better person to her family and about how others could tell from my spirit that I totally relied on God and that there was a peace about me, that I was person that just kept going no matter how hard the times were I was going through. I read one from a daycare parent that said I spoke things to her that brought her out of some of the darkest times in her life and I didn't even realize it. I read one from my sister about how I always took things as they were and always looked for the good in every situation, even as a child in a messed up home. I read one from my husband about how he believed in me and about how I was the piece of the puzzle that held him together, and his friend when when no one else was, and his listening ear when there was no one else to talk to. I read these letters and bawled because I am not the person I used to be. I have quit getting close to people because I have been afraid of getting hurt. I have built up walls to protect myself but instead I have just closed myself in. I stopped looking for the silver lining in every situation because I told myself that stuff like that would never happen for me. After all I have been through, I guess it shouldn't be a suprise that I feel the way I do. But, reading those letters made me want to find myself again, to find hope in the future, to see how blessed I am, to trust that "God is in control." I have a really big decision to make and a tough situation I need to take care of and I know the trials in my life are far from over. But no matter what I go through, I don't want to lose myself again. I want to continue to be the peace in the midst of the storm, to have others look at me and see what it is really like to have a relationship with my Father in Heaven. I want my husband to be proud that I am his wife and my kids to be happy that I am their mother. I want to be a good sister, aunt, daughter, and friend. I want to inspire others to remember that no matter what they are going through, it is okay to hang on to yourself and believe in happy endings.