Thankfulness, in another year

As I sit back and watch the world around me. I have mixed emotions. I’m thankful for all that I have: my family, my friends, my health. And yet, I find myself conflicted with the challenges that I’m still facing after all these years. We think that we’ve come so far, only to see the problems of yesteryear still there, still staring back at us. It’s easy to get disheartened and forget the progress that’s been made. I say this as someone who tries to live a life of positivity, pushing out the concerns and worries that used to overwhelm me. How easy we can get pulled back in when we give those things room to grow.

Another year has passed, a year that has presented me with some hard decisions to make. In truth, I’ve already made many of the decisions, it’s just coming to terms with the choices themselves that takes time. My life is about to change again, in a big way. Sometimes stepping out on faith is a thing that is terrifying and wonderful, all at the same time. We pray for something, believe that it will happen, and then when it does, we don’t quite know what to do with it. We should be thankful, appreciative, but things don’t always turn out exactly how we want them to. The blessing isn’t always on our terms.

At that point, we have a decision to make. We can move forward and take that leap, or retreat into the comfort of what we know. The only problem, is that if we retreat, we will always regret what could have been. This is especially true of life changing situations. I am not afraid of the future. I am not afraid of stepping out on faith. I have done that quite a few times in my life, and never looked back. The difficulty, comes with letting go of the present.

I don’t understand why things always work out the way they do, but I know that they work out that way for a reason. That reason doesn’t always make sense to us, but it doesn’t have to. There is one who is wiser and who can see further than we can. I understand that. I know for those of you who don’t believe in a God, this may seem like nonsense. I assure you that it’s not, although my mission isn’t to convince you otherwise or debate and argue. I accept what you believe and ask that you merely accept what I believe in turn. And I believe that our lives have a purpose, they aren’t random. We are given choices that dictate the paths that our lives can take.

Those choices build our character and set the story that becomes our life. My story will be an awesome one, I’ve known that from when I was a small child. I was never meant for simple things, or to live a life of obscurity. Not even if I wanted to, God wouldn’t let me get away with that. He’s invested too much into me, spent too much time building my character, building the person that I am. It has been a journey, and that journey is not yet over. In fact, this next decision will be another defining moment of my life, a decision that I am not afraid to make. A decision that I embrace.

I am thankful for all that I have, for all that I am, and for my wife, family and friends. I am thankful for the gifts that I have been given, for the love that I have been shown and for the challenges that I have faced. I am thankful for opportunity beyond my wildest of dreams and I will not look back. It will not be easy, but the things worth doing in life rarely are.