Since the beginning of high school I have been really good about keeping a journal. It's been such a blessing in my life so I make an effort to keep up the good habit. However, keeping a journal AND a blog isn't easy. At least not for me... not yet. Whenever I have the time to write about my life it goes in my journal first. And if I feel like writing about it AGAIN, then I blog.
But today I feel that what I have to say is important enough (to me, at least) to put both places. So here you go. :)
(copied from my journal)
Mine and Ian's car accident was 5 years ago today.
Happy Anniversary?? haha
Every year when Thanksgiving time rolls around I get an eerie feeling and I feel like Eeyore, like I'm walking around with a rain cloud over my head. It's kind of a disturbing, depressing, unsettling time of year for me. I don't like Thanksgiving and every November I become consumed with the idea "I just want Thanksgiving to be over." It wasn't until a couple weeks ago when I was talking to my mom that I figured out why exactly.
Every Thanksgiving (for the last 5 years) I am overcome with a sense of survivor's guilt and... something else. There's another feeling mixed in there, but I don't know what it is. I couldn't even tell you if it's a good or bad feeling. It's just weird.
I am the only person I know that has ever survived being ejected from a car. Everyone else I've ever heard of getting ejected has died. (I'm sure there are others, I've just never heard of them.) It makes me think "Why me? Why did God save me? What makes me so special?" These questions can be overwhelming to me at times, but every Thanksgiving they consume me. It's all I can think about. Sometimes when I think about those questions I cry. Other times thinking of those questions strengthens my testimony that God lives, that He has a plan for me and that He plays an active role in my life. And mixed in there somewhere I feel a responsibility to live right and prepare myself now because I have a special calling in life and I haven't completed it yet.
So what I want to say today is this: Don't wait for something tragic to happen to you to appreciate what you have. Or to realize that you are important to God and that He's planning on you to do something down here that no one else in this world can do as well as you can. You have to be worthy of that calling, though. Live right. Do what you know is right and God will give you the opportunity to do something for Him that only you can do. I love that I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I love trials. They are a refiner's fire. I will be forever grateful for that near-death experience 5 years ago. I hope I never forget the lessons it has taught me.
I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving.
My last piece of advice for tonight:
Wear your seat belt!! :)
