That old hymn popped in my head yesterday, and even though it's fairly cheesy, it has truth to it. We all have many blessings to count, no matter who you are or what you're going through. So today, I'm going to count my blessings. This list could be infinite so I'll just categorize!
1. My God, faith, and salvation. First and foremost, I believe God created each and every one of us for a purpose, and whenever I get stuck on the negative things in life, I try to remember that He is right there with me, and growth comes from the hardships. And everything else on this list is a blessing straight from God.
2. My family. I genuinely love my entire family more than I can say. Whether we're related by blood, marriage, whatever, it doesn't matter. I love each and every one of them and am thankful that they are part of my life, whether I see and talk to them all the time, or not so often.
3. My friends, old and new. I have had an insane amount of support from others, some of them I've known pretty much since birth, some that I barely know or don't know at all. They are probably all sick of hearing me talk about myself, (I know I'm sick of hearing me talk about myself!), but they don't complain, and even friends who are going through problems of their own take the time to ask about me and how I'm doing.
4. My overall health. Even with the whole cancer thing, I'm relatively healthy. I never had any major health problems in the first 33 years of my life, and being side tracked a little by all this reminds me that I'm so very lucky to have a healthy body and not have to live with chronic pain or disease. As a side note, today I'm thankful for sore muscles! Because it means I was able to work out. When I was in the middle of it, hating life, I reminded myself that I should be grateful that I CAN do this stuff!
5. My job. I have a good job, with good health insurance, and I have a great boss, who has been so understanding whenever I've had tough times to go through. I'm not one of those people who just loves my job, and can't wait to go to work, but I cannot even express how grateful I am for the job and for the person I work for. The rest of the guys I work with are pretty alright too :)
6. My 2nd job. I work part time at 2 different gyms, teaching cycling class and training clients. I do actually love this job, and love love love the people at both places, the staff, clients, and members. Every time I walk through the doors, I see plenty of smiling faces and I leave feeling great, not just because of the workout, but because the people are so awesome. Some of my personal heroes are people I've met through the gym.
7. All the material stuff. I try to remember to thank God on a regular basis for the fact that I woke up in a comfy bed, in a nice apartment, with A/C (or heat, during those 5 times in Florida we actually need it), had hot running water, put on nice clothes, got in my nice little baby Jeep that I love, and had a job to go to, that helps to provide all these little things I take for granted. Oh and food. Can't forget food. Not sure if that falls under material things, but I'll add it here anyway. Love me some food. It's easy to forget that there are those who don't have these comforts.
8. Closed doors. I found out yesterday that my insurance won't cover my participation in a clinical trial, which was what I was banking on to hopefully get a new cancer treatment that isn't widely available yet. It was already a big gamble, would I get into the clinical trial to begin with, would I get the new medicine that I wanted, or the old standard of care medicine (with a 3-5% success rate - boo!), would the medicine actually work, would the side effects be too awful, would there be more unknown long term side effects? Question after question. I was immediately upset when I found out I probably wouldn't be able to do the trial, then I just felt peace. Honestly, I wasn't 100% for the treatment, and every time I thought about them starting the IV and injecting me with chemicals, I had this sinking feeling, and could envision myself calling it off at the last second. I prayed the other day that if this wasn't the right thing for me to do, that God would just close the door, and after my initial reaction to the news, I realized that this could just be His way of doing just that. I've thought a little bit about other possibilities, but I'm just not at peace with the drug treatment. It's a hard call to make, and I felt like if I COULD get treatment, I owed it to myself and everyone who loves me to do it. So I feel like this choice might have been taken from me, because I was making the wrong one. There's no way to know for sure, but life is full of uncertainty right?
So, if anything could be taken from this, I guess it's that we all have our own things to be thankful for, and sometimes what might seem like bad news can be good, or at least have a positive outcome. Finding out I had cancer was obviously not something I was happy about, or thankful for, but there have been blessings that came out of it, and it hasn't even been that long. Sometimes I just wonder what great things could be down the road for me, that might not have happened if not for the negative things that life has thrown at me. I encourage everyone to be mindful daily of what you are thankful for in your own life, and what good has come out of the bad.
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