It's Sunday morning. I am adding finishing touches earlier than usual because this week is going to be crazy and I'm not confident that I'll get to it again before Thursday. It snowed over the weekend; now it's raining. I wish the Northwest would just make up its mind already. Why am I starting these posts with the weather???

k. I'm done now : )

This week, I wanted to focus on miracles. It has been heavy on my mind, especially since I have to dig a little deeper through the muck and yuck to find gratitude this year. 2020 miracles?? These three areas come to mind.

I will someday write an entire piece on this, because it is a story that deserves telling. Some of you might remember the short update I posted in March. I'll never forget the day my dad took us to peek inside the windows. We fell in love with the space, the log walls and wood floors, the vaulted ceiling. My parents talked, they put in an offer and we waited. For sure, I thought we wouldn't get it - after so many previous disappointments. But in February, miraculously, papers were signed and keys were given. We moved in right before Pandemic World hit, and thank goodness. The first weeks of quarantine were spent unpacking boxes, and making lists of the things we needed but didn’t have.

= spoons
= kitchen chairs
= A COUCH
= mattresses
= wood shed
= FIREWOOD

For everything this property has, it was really only a beautiful house on beautiful land. Not set up to live in. Not meant to be lived in through the winter (I am just waiting to be snowed in at least once this year). We have had to do all the work ourselves. We have built fences and chopped oh so many trees. Dug trenches for water and electrical lines, raised chickens, gardened and shoveled truckload after truckload of mulch. That is just a smidge of our responsibility. It doesn’t include cooking and shopping and full time jobs and uh. . .sitting down to idk, read a book?

It has been the hardest experience of my adult life. It is impossible to express in words. Even so, sitting down to marvel at the wondrous fortune we were handed needs to happen more often. In the morning, when the sun shines through the windows and the mountains are covered in clouds, and I have to tell myself “Am I seeing this? Really seeing this? I have a place to call home. Remember, k. Remember this.”

The miracle of life is talked about so much it almost feels cliché to write (though I firmly believe life itself should never be thought of as cliché, no matter how often it is mentioned). I don’t remember if I have ever been more aware of the fleetingness that is life. Not wanting to get into details, I will only say that I have witnessed more life-threatening situations this year than I ever want to. And I am, I like to think, stronger than most.

I know the loss has touched you too. Whether it be personal, or global, or other – life is not meant to be taken for granted as often as it is. It is a sadness that cannot be explained unless you have been close to the other side, and realize how precious indeed it is.

Enough about that, now, I guess. Hold your people close. Hold the goodness close. You won’t have it forever.

I have always striven for deep connection, or none at all. Just ask, I am the worst at dinner parties or anywhere else that requires small talk. I can’t. do. it. So this will not be about the great number of new friends I have made this year. This is about friends I have had for some time that, this year, became so much closer and dearer. In the past, I had maybe one friend that I’d consistently text. This year? Three.

There’s nothing like 10PM Instagram messaging over a shared passion or topic that makes you smile every time your phone makes the sound. So much so that your siblings are like, “Is that _____ again?” There’s nothing like making someone’s day with a piece of music you found just for them. Or a meme that explains just what you’re both feeling.

I am so so so grateful for the small sphere of people that have walked through 2020 with me. They are lifelines.

All good things I’ve experienced this year, have also come with sadness. I’ve had to practice shifting my focus away from how I feel, to what has happened: the miracle(s). I hope in coming years that I only grow better and better and better at not allowing sad things to overtake every piece of my heart. There must be a significantly larger part walled off for gratitude and joy.