Amid a difficult season, we can learn to be thankful. And at the end of a hard year, we can also look back with gratitude.
Even when we feel like there’s nothing to be thankful for, we can still change our perspective and so refresh our spirits and souls with renewed hope.
There are three things I am so grateful for this year:
1. On the practical side, one of the toughest things this year with JSSM & The Creative Community this year was the load-shedding. Our classes were held in the evenings, and our writing classes were on Sunday afternoons. Most of the time, we had no power. It was tough to figure out the logistics, and it was especially tough when Eskom would decide at the last minute to add even more hours to the load-shedding schedules.
I am so grateful to my mom for buying us a home inverter, for this enabled me to still do my administration work at home. Some evenings, we were able to host JSSM at our home.
The building where we have our classes – Global Leadership Academy – also invested in inverters about a month ago, and now the whole building will always have power. This means next year, we will have no classes in the darkness anymore. For that, I am extremely grateful.
2. I am also so grateful that my mom is healthy again, as well as my cat. They were both extremely sick this year, with my mom getting iodine poisoning and my cat also getting poisoned by a deadly plant in our estate. I could’ve lost them both this year, and I love them both so much. I am thankful that they are still in my life.
3. I am so grateful that I stuck to writing my weekly devotionals this year. This means that I have now completed the first draft of my third book. All because I made a consistent choice of writing 300 words every week… I can’t believe how quietly this major accomplishment appeared on my list of things I accomplished this year, along with starting JSSM and The Creative Community.
All in all, it’s been an interesting year full of ups and downs. I am also thankful that I can close this chapter in my life, and move on to next year with a hopeful heart that 2023 will be an easier year.
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