It wasn't a decision I made boldly.  It has hung in the back of my mind, a lingering erosion of dedication, of  guilt, of hanging on because I worried that to leave would be to loose part of myself.  Because it's where I found myself - the me that wasn't wife or mother - the me that was free and liked and sought after.

Here, on the eve of a decade given to a church basement full of teenage angst and chaos, I am slipping quietly from the room, hushing the tug of heart that begs me to stay.  I've spread too thin.  Something has been lost.  I need to reclaim it.

It's not you, it's me.  I need to take this time and wrap it around my family and catch them and hold them so that they know they are my priority.  I fought tears while I let him down gently, almost caved when he told me how much I would be missed, how when I'm there everything just seems right.  But shouldn't that be my creed to my family?

You have changed me.  You have shaped me.  You have annoyed me.  You have loved me.

This is not forever.  But it is for now.

Don't forget me.

It is for this...

and this...

and this...

and this!