Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

I think this wonderful duo of words isn‘t really used enough. It‘s turned into a pretty rare pair of words that doesn‘t really mean as much as it should. The real tragedy though, is that we really do have so much to be thankful for. We just don‘t realise it, or acknowledge it. I know that I don‘t say thank you enough. I don‘t genuinely and personally thank people as much as I could; as much as I should... So I wanted to use this post to firstly say thank you. Thank you and thank you again. Genuinely.

Thank you to each and every person that is reading this right now. Thank you for your time.

Thank you to anyone who has ever spoken a kind word to me. From those people that encouraged me when I was a familiar face in a familiar environment, to the people that came around me in the toughest of tough times.

Thank you to the people that took the time to get to know the ‘new kid‘. I've loved getting to know every single one of you.

Thank you to the people that never stop encouraging me, the people that never say a mean word, the people who put up with my mistakes and help me out when I‘m being really inconvenient.

Thanks to the brilliant people that look out for me to make sure I don‘t get in trouble or do anything stupid.

Thanks to the people that continue to challenge me to be the best I can be.

Thanks to the people that always, always, always have my back no matter how far apart we are. Thank you for caring for me.

Thank you to everyone that has ever annoyed me, told me off or got on my nerves. I've learnt a lot about who I am because of you. I love you guys the most of all and I hope you know it.

But there are few ridiculously important people that I can never thank enough. Firstly, the Big Man upstairs: God. He‘s given me such a wonderful life and I have no idea how I would survive if He wasn't always at my side. He has been with me through every single moment of every single day and I‘m honoured to live for Him.

Secondly, my Mumma and Daddy. These two people don‘t get thanked enough; my biggest fans and greatest heroes. They‘ve been there for me always and they will always be there for me. We scream at each other and laugh together too. We drive each other crazy, but I could never ask for better parents. So thank you, mum and dad.

You see, often we find ourselves sitting around and complaining about how tough our life is. We complain about what we don‘t have and what we want. It‘s so easy to list the things that we don‘t like and aren‘t thankful for, but it can be a lot harder to actually thank people and thank God for the things we do have. The fact of the matter is that thankfulness and gratefulness is a pretty hard skill to master. It‘s incredibly hard to be thankful in tough times and it‘s even harder to look back and realise the good that came out of tough stuff. But a lesson I learnt as a child, from a veggie-tales video, is that a thankful heart is a happy heart. No matter what‘s going on, no matter how low we feel, if we can be thankful, then we can be happy.

Forever Friends

Today I observed a prime example of friendship: two 6 year old boys- fighting. They were angry and frustrated at each other- annoyed that they weren't in agreement. They fought for around 20 minutes, and then they started kicking a ball around. How is it possible that their fight could so easily end?

Many times in friendships we fight. And many times we forgive and become friends again. Sometimes we promise that we will never, ever talk to each other again, we say "I hate you" to each other; but we secretly know, deep in our hearts, that those fierce promises will definitely be broken. We know that we will always be friends- not because we look alike, not because we live in the same town, not because we're both rich, not because we like the same things, but because we are tied together at the heart and because we have a special friendship that time and space cannot destroy.

I believe that true friends are those that can be together after years of not seeing each other and still be able to hang out like normal, friends are those that we never lose because they live in our hearts, they are the people that we can fight with and the people that we can promise never to talk to and then break those promises freely and fearlessly. True friends are made in the heart and are tied together at heart- because true friendship is when time, distance, victory, loss, money or health don't matter, because true friends are made in the heart.

When the going gets tough...

'When the going gets tough, the tough get going' it says. Sometimes, life knocks us down, pulls us apart and beats us up. We fall and we can't seem to get back up again.

Life has a way of overwhelming us. It makes things tough for us, makes us hurt, cry, break and grieve. It gives us hard decisions to make, it seems to complicate things and stress us out- as if we aren't stressed enough.

The 'stuff' in life comes at us in waves. Sometimes it's quiet and the tides are peaceful and calm- everything is how it should be. At other times, there are raging currents, pulling us this way and that, tearing us apart, pushing us around- things are tough but we gotta keep swimming. The weird thing is that the harder we kick and the harder we try to get ourselves out of rough situations, the harder our life seems to get. We just have to keep paddling, keep a tame mind, don't stress and know that God has all things under control. 

In my opinion, I think that the hardest thing to do when you're in the middle of trouble is to let go- to give all our worries to someone bigger than us and to just trust God. Why? Because I believe that God totally controls our lives- He's got us in His hand- and somehow, in the midst of tragedy, we seem to think that it's God's fault that we're in a muck. 

So all I wanna say is keep going, keep swimming, keep paddling and just keep on keeping on...