My dad has a Model A that was given to him by his dad. I remember growing up and playing in the rusted out body of this car. I remember boxes of pieces; the rear view mirror, a door handle, the top of the gear shifter. For 30 years, my dad carried around the pieces of this car and then one day he restored it. He had help, of course, car experts, mechanics, and such, but the will to do it was his, the tenacity to keep all the parts, the resolve to carry the boxes through multiple moves and to know one day it would be done - those things were his alone. It's easy to get distracted, discouraged, to let doubt decide what you will do or not do. It's easy to get overwhelmed by time, or the chaos that runs most of our lives. It's easy to forget or get lazy or to say you are too busy, to turn everything into 'I've just got too much going on'. What isn't easy is to pursue something in a relentless way until it is done, to see it in your mind even when it isn't real, to wonder and worry if what you can see so clearly will ever be real, to go to bed every night and wake up every morning yearning for what you do not have, but could make...if only.... All those "if onlys", all that energy welling around inside of you, knowing exactly what you are capable of, but not being able to create it - that is what isn't easy. But then one day there it is. You made it happen. You defeated every monster of self-doubt, you slayed every dragon of fear and regret, you persevered through the worst of things to arrive at your own definition of the best. My dad showed me the way. I played in that old car, I cut my feet on those little shards of metal on the floor board, I saw something so broken it didn't seem like it could ever be whole again...and then it was. Like a phoenix it rose from the dust of those boxes, it became shiny and new and made noise and jumbled and rumbled as it ran across the bridge over that mountain stream, and seeing it, watching it happen, knowing how it came to be, that made an indelible impression on me. Watching him molded me into someone that didn't quit. I didn't stop when I was told I'd never do it, I didn't quit when the art failed, I didn't stop when the story fell apart, I didn't quit when I got criticized, I didn't quit when I was slow, and I didn't quit when I lost the one person I most wanted to show it to. I couldn't quit, because I was raised by parents that never quit and partnered with someone who wouldn't let me quit even when I was at my lowest point. "You'll never get what you want if you stop trying," he said. I trusted him, and he was right. I remembered what I'd seen my dad do. I found that the obstacle is the way and faith lives in you even when you forget or get lost. I could hear her, my mom, "Life is a journey, not a destination. Never forget that." I won't and I didn't. I can feel her proudly seeing me today from Heaven, with my grandmothers and grandfathers, by her side. I was reminded she is with me, even when she isn't, by my dear aunt and her treasured words that came in those most terrible of moments. So in this moment too I will drop every regret, every feeling of being too late, and know it doesn't matter - it is the journey. She is here and can see it. Today, this is for both of my parents, on their anniversary, to know that today I published my first children's book, dedicated to my daughters, and never forgot that the journey may be jumbly and rumbly like riding in that Model A but the people we share it with, every moment, every memory with them, make it wonderful and valuable, make it joyful and faithful, make it beautiful.