Thankful for What I am Leaving Behind

            I got this title from an app that I am using on my phone everyday now. It is an app where it gives you different ways to be thankful for things in your life. One of the ways was called: "Negative Visualization". It is where you take something bad that is happening in your life or just anything different that you have little time left with it. The app said let it something that will end in the next two to three months. It could be a chapter of your life closing soon. It challenges you to think about why you are grateful for that thing or chapter in your life. That is what this entry will be about why I am grateful about the year 2017. I could go back to a lot of things that happened this year and turn them around for the good of where I am in life now.
            I got this challenge on my phone on the 17th of this month. I will write what I wrote on my phone. Here it is: it was, of course, about my job since I was starting a new one in the new year. I came up with 6 things that I was grateful for about my job and how it changed me as a person. The 7 things were/are: meeting a girl like me as a supervisor, being with school aged kids, having a break from a full time job, getting into the school district, it grew me more as a person, gave me more time to myself, and met some pretty amazing kids while I was teaching. I will miss that job for sure but I know God has something amazing planned for me in this coming year. That is why I am thankful for leaving behind my job in this year.
            There are some other reasons I am thankful for my job. With as people that was working there or not working there, it helped me get out of my shell more and be the leader that I know I can be. I know there are things that happened through that job that wouldn't happen any other way. It was kind of like a God divine job for as long as I was there.
             Next, I can put what I am thankful for that happened with my friends. I went to two weddings of two of my very close college friends and clebrated with them all I could. It was hard in the moment because I am now the one of us four that is to get married close by in the area. There is another friend but she lives in FL so I tired to remember that during those times. I look back on those times now and I know that through both of those weddings, they just made me stronger and made me want to wait a little longer for Mr. Right. It also made me think more seriously about where I am going and want to go in my life.
             Even though, I have just started visiting new church this month and only a couple of times so far. Thinking about leaving the one I am at now, I am thankful for it a lot because it has been a big part of my life. I was baptized for a 2nd time there last year and that is where I met most of my AR friends. I also have learned to love the Lord more deeply there and what it meant to have a love relationship with Him. That church too, though, also took me through a lot of heartbreak and what ifs.  Heartbreaks like losing friends because they have gotten married or just too busy with life. That helped me though because I had to search for other people to be my friends so it made me more outgoing and okay with myself. I have done a lot of women's Bible studies there that helped me through some of the hardest times in my life. 
               In a way too, this past year, I have left behind an old lifestyle and started a new one. Left the lifestyle of anxiety and trying to fix it with drs. pills back in June and I haven't looked back since. That is another thing that I am thankful for leaving behind. I have kind of started an organic lifestyle or as organic as I can get with the money that I have right now. I am on some more natural pills plus a little bit of Plexus. Plexus is what I take to help calm my anxiety and it seems to really work. I am trying to eat healthier and can now with a new job. I have also started to use the oils a lot more. Not only the organic lifestyle, but trying to trust God and listen to Him more so I can stop the worrying and anxious. Trying to remember that God is in control and not me.
               I have also been researching a lot about gut health because I feel like that is what is truly wrong with my health. It is not in my brain but in my gut. I just feel like this next year will be a lot of letting go of the things that I started with in AR but for something that I have prayed about non stop since college. I don't want to get my hopes up too high but I don't want to doubt God either. There is a fine line between the two. It is good to change things up once in awhile even if what you thought would come true never does. That is how I am looking at it right now.
              When we look at things in the past though thankful eyes and heart and mind, it really does set our attitude to a different tone. Not only our attitude, but our life too. It shows us the reason what those things happened and what came from those things happening. I know I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for most of the things that I named here and more that I can't write about. This is only a third of the "bad" things that I am thankful for and why. I might be leaving them behind but that is good because I know deep down that those things have grown and changed me to where I can move on to bigger and better things.