Life is Beautiful

Once again, it is that time of the year where we all take time out of our busy and hectic lives to reflect and give thanks. Thanks that we made it through another year despite the challenges, obstacles, and hurdles it brought us. Thanks that we have been blessed with another year, another chance, to try and get it right and remedy the errors of our ways. Thanks that we are so fortunate to have people who love, support, and encourage, called friends.

The past year has been a lot of things. Challenging. Exhausting. Enlightening. Unexpected twists and turns. Surprises and disappointments. Fun, fear, and frustration. Just when I thought I had me all figured out, again I was confronted with experiences and situations that forced me to reckon with who that actually was. While I have not made it through this year unscathed, I have made it through. Stronger - although the feelings do not always match the circumstance. In a year in which I’ve become intimately acquainted with hurt, it helps that I have been surrounded with the love of friends, and for that I am extremely thankful.

I’m thankful that this year has taught me a valuable, although difficult to learn, lesson that life is beautiful. Life, with all its ups and downs and highs and lows, is an amazing gift. Simply being alive to experience whatever life has to offer is beautiful. With all the sickness, pain, and death in the world, life is too short to take for granted. In every aspect of life, there is beauty, even hurt and pain. While in the trenches of these emotions, it is difficult to see, but when you emerge you realize that to feel pain is still to feel and to feel is to be alive. And even more tragic would to be unable to feel the love, support, and strength of friends.

So to you, my friends, my confidantes, my cheerleaders, my faithful companions, thank you for knowing me and loving me in spite of it all. Thank you for lending an ear when I need to talk and for silently understanding when I can’t. Thank you for being on my side and having faith in me when I lacked it for myself. Thank you for saying words you mean and meaning words you say. For this, and all of your other kind words and actions, I am extremely thankful. And for this year, that is what I have to show.

I love you from the bottom of my heart!

Happy Thanksgiving!