To Those I Have Hurt...

This year is living proof that life's toughest times inspire the most growth. For it is in the most tumultuous year of my marriage that I discovered who I am, who my wife truly is and why I love her so much. It is as if I was sleepwalking through much of the last decade, living life and emotion on the very surface...never really diving down to see the beauty and sometimes the darkness of what was underneath. For we are driven by the very depths of our subconcious, where our strongest desires and fears reside and ultimately determine our actions and the resulting perceptions of success and failure...with the scariest thing about this being that we rarely see our biggest tragedies or mistakes while we are in the midst of them.

I wish it hadn't taken utter chaos in my life to wake me up to the beauty that I had around me, but such is the plight of all of humanity. It is often our bottom that allows us the opportunity for spiritual transformation to see things in a different light and create "new life" where pain and suffering previously existed. My life is a miracle and becomes more of a miracle with every passing day. Little by little, I source out the thoughts and and behaviors that have brought me pain and simply remove them from my life. I suppose that's how we should always live our lives, but I must have lost the instruction manual and frankly never been one that was patient enough to sit down and read a manual anyway. To summarize what it would probably say, is that it is our very thoughts and behaviors that create our experience and the quality of our relationships...tough thoughts bring tough times and thus my ill perceptions have made a mess of our lives over the past few years.

So nearly one year after I turned our family's lives upside down, I have the following:

To my wife and three little girls whom I have taken for granted, I am deeply sorry for a year of great pain and uncertainty that I selfishly and arrogantly thrust upon us. This extends to all who are close to us and deeply love us as well, who have also had to watch and experience pain on their own level. To My Dearest Elizabeth and soulmate, I am humbled by the strength that you have shown in holding it all together despite the many times that you probably wondered how and if you could. I will forever look upon our little family and see you as the glue that binds. You have "walked the walk" of  loyalty and integrity in this marriage and served as an unwavering example of courage and will through adversity. I learn from you each and every day and I appreciate you from the bottom of my heart.

I now wake up every morning and see the the miracle of my life, the miracle of all that I have been blessed with, the miracle of My Dearest Elizabeth...the miracle that I intend to honor, to nurture, to protect from this day forwrad for all the days that she will have me.

I love you and deeply appreciate you.

~D