It's Christmas Eve.
I woke up today and I am very grateful. I put my two feet on the ground. As I put down my right foot down I say, "Thank." As I put down my left foot down I say, "You."
I woke up in my bed, with covers, in an apartment, with a roof and heat. With a kitchen that has water and food. With a pot that makes coffee. With a table to eat at. With a speaker to play music. With books to read and eyes to read them. I can walk. I can hear. I am healthy. My heart beats. The sun rose today and God gave me another opportunity to live. Man--It is crazy, I can not put it into words, well I am trying, but I cant even begin to describe how I feel right now. SO I decided to write and ramble. Maybe you will feel what Im feeling and we can connect.
I am grateful enough to bring me to tears. Even after a mediocre gym session, I come home, sit and emotions take over. I instantly started thanking God and then my eyes started to sweat.
There is an overwhelming amount of people who are begging and praying to God to be in the position that I am in right now. I don't say or mean that in a Im better than anyone kind of way, I say that with conviction and humility. Why do I deserve this life? How can I be so selfish at times? What did I do in order to receive this kind of love? Its truly humbling when you actually think about everything you have. Even if you have the technology to read this you are still in the top percentile of the world population.
I am grateful and these emotions have gotten to me the past few days because it is almost a whole new year. And looking back a year ago today, who knew my life was a moment away from changing.
A year ago today, I was with my family. I was blessed enough to make it safely home as I drove through the Sierra Nevada mountains, in a Scion tC, with some chains, in a white out blizzard in order to make it to them. I love my family. I would do anything for them. Anything. It is hard to describe that type of love. If anyone of them needed a heart to live, I would give mine. It's not perfect but its real.
A year ago, I was a few days away from traveling half way around the world to a beautiful unfamiliar country. Never have I been that far away from home, yet I felt as if I was at home because of who I was traveling with. Also the excitement that filled me and the joy of knowing my eyes where going to be opened to a whole new part of the world and a whole new perspective to a way of life.
A year ago, I was about to wake up with my family on Christmas day. Which is a moment that lately, in recent years, I have not been able to experience. It is special anytime I am able to wake up in my parents house and share some coffee with my mom and dad. To wake my littlest, not so little now, 17 year old sister from her teenage sleep. And to lay with my dog, Kada, as she puts her arm around me while I lay next to her and rub her belly.
A year ago, I was at a point in my life where I felt that the next year of 2016 was going to be the best year of my life. So many opportunities, so much love, so much life to be lived, so much life that was about to be started.
A year ago and a few days added---December 31st.
I was standing on an island in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand with two people with whom I love and loved dearly. Our beach bungalow was behind us. In front of us the ocean. It seemed as if we had the beach to ourselves. My feet cuddled with the sand. I was wearing a ridiculous patterned Hawaiian shirt. Fireworks blasting and surrounding us around the bay. Light lanterns filled the sky and floated above us as they replicated the stars above us. I was standing in one of the happiest moments of my life. It's difficult to even write about it--- seriously difficult to go back to that time in my mind, but at that time and moment I was incredibly happy and in love with my life. That moment I knew a few things. I am incredibly loved. Two, I am incredibly in love. Three, through live's ups and downs there are moments that outshine the darkest of days and toughest of days that life throws at us.
There I was standing in that moment. That was a feeling that will never go away. A moment that will never go away.
A few minutes passed and then a new year started.
This year was the toughest year I have experienced. Yet it flew by. Looking back at the last few days of the year in 2015 to now in 2016, my life was just a moment away from changing. Now thats all it feels like, a moment.
LIFE. It changes in an instant. It changes without any warning. It doesn't make an appointment for change and let you know. It just shows up and punches you. As if life is a group of strangers in the light or dark and they come and jump you and beat the absolute life out of you. Life is a moment away from changing who you are in order for you to become who you were called to be. Its not easy. Change is one of the things us as human avoid the most and usually at all cost. But once the change occurs and you embrace it and choose to grow, your life will become so much better. I promise I can tell you from experience.
Now, out of all the life changing events that have happened this past year from pain and heartbreak to joy and happiness, I would not trade what I have now with what I had then. As a believer, as a man, a lover, a son, a friend, as a brother. What God continually does with me and changing me has brought me so far along it would not be worth it to return to the old me. You shouldn't return to the old you. Rise up.
"I did not rise because I am strong. I rose because I have a purpose stronger than all of my weaknesses."
I was right about 2016---so much life to be started. A new life begun for me. A new chapter.
2017 I'm ready.
