As we get into the Holiday season, I've been racking my brain trying to get into that Holiday spirit everyone's raving about. After a year like this year, the only thing I've wanted to do in the next two months is simply survive. Survive finals, survive working, survive my own thoughts. Then it hit me. I'm so focused on surviving, I'd forgotten truly living... and most importantly, enjoying living. I had spent so much time drowning in the sorrows of the disappointments that had hit me that I had never really sat back and looked at how lucky I am for those disappointments and where they have led me.

Earlier this year, I had prayed so hard for a good year. That I would have the clarity of mind to make good decisions in all aspects of life. I was determined to have the best year in 2016, making all the right moves and making everyone proud of the strong person I would turn into. However, you have to have resistance to build strength, something I had failed to consider. Something that I would soon discover for myself.

While the beginning of this year started out well, my decisions and "right moves" were all the wrong ones. The year was going downhill quickly at a rate I couldn't stop. By the middle of the summer, I wondered if I even wanted to keep myself alive to see the end of my disastrous "perfect" year. The school year came and I buried myself in work and textbooks, hoping that would somehow fill my emptiness. I was looking for help in all of the wrong places, and I didn't know what to do.

Then all of the talk about Thanksgiving came and giving thanks. I tried to think of what I had to be thankful for. In a fit of self-pity, I decided there couldn't be anything in this year that I looked back on and was thankful for. Suddenly, it hit me like a ton of bricks: my New Year's prayer. I wanted to be stronger. I looked at myself now and what I had gone through and realized that I had made steps to getting to a strong personality. I was not the same girl who had started this year, but I decided that wasn't a terrible thing. At that moment, tears started pouring out of the ducts that I had thought were frozen by my stone heart I had obtained. I begged God to forgive me for turning my back on the one person who was waiting to help me all year, with his arms wide open.

When I had gone to that party looking for release, He was there.

When I had told everyone I was fine while melting inside, He was there.

At 3 AM, when I was questioning letting my life continue, He was there, holding my hand even if I refused to feel it.

I asked for His strength and I felt stronger than I had all year, trying to carry the world on my shoulders. I could feel His embrace, warm and sweet, and remembered that He was my closest friend. The Friend who never fails. The Comforter who never gets tired of me crying on His shoulder. The Father who carries me through my darkest valley. The Love that will never leave. I wondered why I had ever left.

In order to get here, on my knees at 2 AM, I realized that God had to say "no" to a lot of what I thought I had wanted at the beginning of 2016.

My life is completely different than I had anticipated but I wouldn't ask for a different year. Instead of what I thought I needed, God gave me what I really needed. He taught me things I would have never thought of before this year happened.

He taught me to have compassion. Before this year, I couldn't put myself in a lonely person's shoes. They didn't have to be lonely, they were just wallowing in self-pity. At the end of this year, I want to hug any person I see burdened and angry. They are empty inside just like I was. They need love. They need help. They need a kind heart to hold them and tell them it will be OK. They are just hurting souls, afraid of being burned and scarred from putting themselves out there.

He taught me that suicidal people aren't just looking for attention. How dare I judge another person for taking their life, when they deeply believed that was the only way they could end the pain? I've been there. I know their pain. I want to go to them and tell them it does get better. My heart mourns for those who have reached that dark abyss and I pray they find the light before it's too late for them.

He taught me that no matter how social and extroverted you are, sometimes it's OK to be alone. To have the time to be with yourself and God and be satisfied with just the two of you.

Finally, He taught me that to find strength, you first have to allow yourself to be weak. That crying isn't weakness and sometimes it's necessary to let it out in order to stand back up. We don't have to cry in front of everyone or even anyone at all, but He will be there to wipe those tears away.

Through everything, I'm walking out of 2016 with a smile on my face, a skip in my step, and a brighter outlook on living and the people living around me. The past can burn you, but fire refines gold and at the end, you'll shine even brighter than you ever have. I'm stronger than I've ever been and I have only One to thank for it all.

Thank you, Lord, for letting me walk out of 2016, not only alive but truly living.