Count your blessings. All the amazing moments in life, all the times that you’ll never forget and even the hard moments that made you stronger. Being thankful for the blessings we all have is something I certainly know I need to remember more often. I must be aware of and thankful for each blessing that has been put in my life.

I am thankful for each and every person in my life! My four awesome young brothers, my amazing parents, my compassionate girlfriend, all my epic friends from back home and here at college. I will forever be thankful for the moments I have had with each and every one of them. But I also am thankful as I look forward to each memory I have yet to make and the people I still haven’t met that will someday be in my life.

I am extremely thankful for God’s beautiful creation. Like as I sit here on a warm fall afternoon, I am sitting by a calm, clear lake surrounded by the beautiful falls colors. But on top of that, I am in one of Virginia’s most beautiful and historic towns, Williamsburg. I have the opportunity to stop and listen to the soft wind blowing the rainbows of color around me, I notice the hawk soaring high above in the clear blue sky and the warmth of the sun against my skin. The colors of every season, singing of birds on a spring morning to the chirping of crickets on a fall evening. I adore the blanket of white covering the mountains in the winter with the highlights of the colorful evergreens. There is nothing like the solitude and silence that can be found among the crowd of trees in places far from others. Appreciate the silence, enjoy the beauty, allow nature's best to stun and awe you.

Be thankful for each moment of life. There is a whole world out there, millions of places to see and billions of people to meet. How can we even afford to complain and fuss about the often small and often unnecessary issues in our lives? There is so much joy and beauty and goodness in all of our lives and I can tell you all of us have it way better than most. So how is it even fair for us to forgot our blessings?

Well, it’s not. Imagine you have to live in a house made of a rain tarp and two shits of tin metal roofing. Now imagine there are five of you living in this one roof shanty with a single mattress to share among you and a dirt floor. Your parents both have to walk to five miles to their jobs, you can go to school because your family is too poor and you live in an abandoned trash dump. That was what I saw when I was in Brazil, Mexico and Jamaica all these people have that situation as their daily life. So I will ask again, how can forget our blessings?

Let us not become so comfortable and use to a daily norm that we fail to acknowledge the creation and gifts around us. All of us have been given amazing friends, super fun moments and incredible talents and that is something we must always appreciate to the very best of our ability. Never forget to count your blessings and allow thankfulness to be more of an everyday occurrence in your life as I hope many of us will.