When we’re tested, we find we have the ability to be resilient, and with faith we can survive and thrive

You know, personal experience…you’ve got to learn to be tough, you’ve got to learn to survive.

Being resilient is the ability to thrive and to survive,” Voraakhom said. “We have that ability as human beings, but our urban infrastructure does not have it and doesn’t allow us to have it.

To bring a gift for people to know that resilience is something that you can actually live to achieve, and that the fear of the unknown doesn’t need to be something that limits your ability to thrive in life...Those qualities will be important for everybody to be able to take in.

The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

There were lots of challenges. There were days when I didn’t have money; days when my school fees were delayed. I didn’t have a lot of things that my mates had but I knew I was going to have them one day as I knew that with God on my side, I was going to work hard and ensure that those things I didn’t have then, I could have them when working so I got stuck to school.

They opened my mind to realities I didn’t know existed. They forced me to be resilient, to sacrifice, to see how little I knew, and also how much.

I encountered challenges that tested my resilience, but they also taught me the value of resourcefulness and the importance of giving back to the community.

The ability to overcome adversity and failure is an evolved capacity that is essential to countless organisms, including humans. The capacity to develop an anti-fragile response to repeated failures is a fundamental, necessary, and beneficial feature of life. No meaningful goal can ever be achieved without resilience and effort.

The resilience that I had to show to learn how to walk again after my leg was amputated to then become an athlete when nobody would even have me on high school teams. So taking that resilience and turning it around and saying how can I give that resilience to other people?"

Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us. It comes from gratitude for what’s good in our lives and from leaning in to the suck. It comes from analyzing how we process grief and from simply accepting that grief. Sometimes we have less control than we think. Other times we have more. I learned that when life pulls you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again.

Perseverance is a great gift that the Lord is ready to offer us. But we must learn to welcome it and make it come alive, to be strong. It is one of those gifts that are built up over time, in the small trials of the beginning that help us to be stronger, to be able to carry the Cross when it becomes heavier. It is what enables us and makes us capable of moving forward.

That way of life against which my generation rebelled had given us grim courage, fortitude, self-discipline, a sense of individual responsibility, and a capacity for relentless hard work.

Life has taught me to be determined, to be focused and to rely on God. Everything I have passed through is a lesson. I don’t think I regret any part of my life because I saw it as a lesson to prepare me for greater heights. Again, when you have God, you have peace of mind because no matter the life challenge, there is always hope because with God all things are possible. So, nothing really bothers me. I have gone through a lot to let anything bother me because I have God who is always by my side.