The little things.

It's the little things in life, these days, that make it so valuable.
People, friends and acquaintances have asked me lately, what I have been up to, and they are generally  pretty satisfied when I say I'm just working full time up at the Avalanche Cheese and Goat dairy, and honestly, that's most of what I have been doing, but in that and around that my life is growing, I am growing, in a new kind of steady strength and I am finding that it is all the little things that make my life so good, so worthwhile.

It's waking up in the dark to a text that tells me, without fear that I am loved.
It's the silent secret shared between my dog and I as we wind our way up the path towards the house under a fiercely black sky, burning with brilliant 4am stars.
It's all my baby goats, tails waging and bright eyes shining, smelling of earth and milk and sun.
It's the morning coming easy, but like a freight train, illuminating the sky in the east, silhouetting the dark mountains and the new leafs in the elm trees against the lightening pale blue-gray sky.

It's the ridiculous joy of clean sun dried sheets on my bed and a freshly showered clean body sliding in between them to the midnight melody of crickets.
It's music filling my cabin, swelling from the new battery operated speaker my dad so generously lets me use. (which is amazing since, I'm completely off the grid, and I totally realize how much music means to my life.)
It's the delight in making art, paint on canvas, or the pictures for my latest collage, spread out around me like a quilt.. waiting to be fit like pieces in a puzzle to make something that just feels right.

It's friends calling me. It's messages left with common words meaning common real life things, like lets watch a movie, or goodness, I'm glad I didn't get eaten by a mountain lion last night! or just expressions  of care, of love, of call me back. Of value.
I feel very strongly about our human need to feel valued. So far in my life, it's the most painful thing I've come upon to feel; to feel unvalued, disposable, like you don't matter to someone who you crave that from intensely. I have not experienced anything more painful. We all want to be valued. It is something deeply inherent in us, and something that takes vulnerability and courage. It takes love.

It's getting home from work, exhausted, and sweaty, and my dads hug and genuine curiosity of how my day was. Something that is new, and tender and so precious to me.

It's family. Even though my brother is in hawaii, it's an hour and half phone conversation.

It's sitting on the couch swapping shoulder rubs with my mom while we watch Downton Abbey in the afternoon.

It's the relief of feeling comfortable enough to truly inhabit my own skin.

It's plans made. Dinner dates and camping expeditions; dates set for dancing and photo shoots, of sleepovers and plans for seeing the people I love.

It's love. The whole hearted kind, I have been so longing for, and so blind to and so terrified to see.

It's money in the bank.

It's taking the higher road, and letting it go; compassion, when the situation becomes muddied with the waters of bad communication and negativity.

It's sitting on the stump outside my cabin watching the super moon rise, cuddled in a clean sweatshirt over a silk nightgown, my hair clean and wet hanging behind me, the radiance of the moon cradled by the dips and curves of the mountains I have known my whole life.

It's gratitude.

It's the smell of used books, checked out from the local library, the stories waiting behind their blackened fonts, recipes waiting to be tried.

It's new strings for my dad's old guitar, that he is handing down to me.

It's letting go, and the work of love.
Of real love, not the imitation crap they temp you with.

I have so many things to be grateful for. and tonight it is plain to me. Thank you world for giving me eyes to see the beauty surrounding me. Thank you for a heart to feel, and a body to work and a mind that wants to think. For friends and Family and baby goats and cheese cake and weddings and dancing and challenges and sweetness to make the hurt worth it, and for really good movies.

Thanks God for all the little things.