Hailey

I’m a daughter. A mother. A sister. A friend. A motherless daughter.

But most importantly, I’m a child of God.

I grew up Catholic. Thirteen years of Catholic school, church, prayer, and faith woven into my childhood. Faith felt like home. So did my family.

Within five years, I lost my grandma, my mom, and my grandpa. I lost my mom at 21, and I wasn’t ready to live in a world without her. I needed her. I still do.

Somewhere in my grief, I became angry with God. I couldn’t understand how a God I grew up believing loved me could take the people I loved most. I never completely stopped believing, but I lost my way.

Then I became a mother.

During my pregnancy, I began finding my way back to God. Not because my grief disappeared or my questions were answered, but because I wanted my daughter to know Him. I want her to grow up surrounded by faith, love, and a community she can lean on when life gets hard.

I want to show her that faith doesn’t mean never struggling. It means finding your way back, even when it’s hard.

I’m still learning. Still questioning. Still grieving. Still finding my way back to God, to church, to prayer, and to a faith that feels like home.

I may never understand why I had to lose the people who raised me, but I refuse to let grief be the end of my story.

This is for the ones who have wandered, questioned, broken down, and tried to find their way back.

You don’t need perfect faith. You don’t need all the answers. You just have to take the next step.

For the space between breaking and becoming. Between the thorns and the bloom. Between grief and hope. Between feeling lost and finding your way home.

We are temporary. Our pain is temporary. Our time here is temporary.

Christ is eternal.

Barry

I spent close to a decade living in the dark.

I lost myself, my family, and others along the way. A lost soul, if you will. In my search for God, He would appear in bold ways, using bald eagles to show me that He had been with me all along.

With the weight of my sins and burdens weighing heavily on my heart, I felt trapped in the darkness, unable to climb out and reach the light.

In my darkest moment, knowing I couldn’t keep living this way, I attempted to end my life in late April 2018. I cried out to God. He knew I was broken, lost, and finally ready to receive His grace.

It started to snow. I cried out to Him, and He answered.

I was never the same again. The weight in my chest that had held me down for all those years was gone. I was filled with light, and a new version of myself began to emerge.

Since then, with the support of my fiancée and family, I’ve become the man I always wanted to be. I’ve become a professional barber, and the personal growth I’ve experienced is something I used to only dream about.

I’m living proof that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I’m a child of God, a fiancé, grandfather, father, son, and brother.