My Awakening

Dear Mike,

Anna recommended this book to me a couple of years ago, The Shack. I was struggling so much with the loss of you. All these years I've had these crashes where all I can think about is the loss of you, how you died, and would obsess with trying to find the man who killed you because I wanted some more answers. The TRUTH whatever it may be. This time, a little over two years ago, I was pregnant with Corrianna. Anna, Ivan, and Deb all reached out to me and so I read the book which changed my life. There is this line in it, "Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly, and if left unresolved you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place" - William P. Young, The Shack. It had never occured to me that these huge parts of me had been paralyzed by pain. I had been wondering where the old me was.



Since reading it I have been healing wounds I've had since your death and this spring some new growth in me started to appear. We planted a vegetable garden.




Our family poured our hearts into it. It was the best we could do on our budget and in the amount of time we had. It spurred so many other projects in the garden and we accomplished them.

This one's from our dahlia bed. Isn't it "bodacious"? Now I've got this itch for some competition. My next hurdles are to run a 5k, particularly the Starlight Run, and to participate in the Petal Pedal. This fall I'm starting my second attempt at the Couch 2 5k and I've found a Couch 2 100k for bicycling so I can prepare for the Petal Pedal.

Your ability to decide, "this is what I want to do so I'm just gonna go learn all I can about it and then make every attempt at getting the end result I desire until I've achieved what I set out to do" is something I feel like I can only hope to accomplish but I'm going to try my darnedest. I thought my life was too messy and bogged down to break away and give my whole heart to something I dreamt of. Now I know I was just dormant, but I'm re-emerging. I hope to pass this powerful trait of Uncle Mike's down to my children so they can know just what a go-getter you were.


Love,


Gabby