The great trees groan, their woody trunks contracting in the cold. Looking up, gray cloud cover blankets the sky. The wind tosses a dried, fallen leaf, rustling on the path before my feet. I pause and listen – pure stillness. The flakes of the first snow land tenderly on my face, lifted slightly toward toward where I know the setting sun would be. My eyes close briefly, then open to behold a beauty unlike any I’ve seen in many years. The world before me slowly hibernating, gradually becoming dormant for a season. I took a deep, cool breath, and emotion flooded up inside me. I’m so grateful to be alive.

As I turn the corner toward downtown, I realized, I am made for Novembers. Unlike my daughters, who were raised on southern sunshine. For me, this returning to northern seasons and climate feel like a coming home, deep in my soul. My body relaxes into the early fading light, the streetlights taunting the darkness come ever sooner.

On my way back up the hill, I am overcome by the beauty. Tears sting my eyes. I wonder if they would freeze on my face, but I don’t think it’s quite that cold yet. For years, I wrestled immensely with seasons in another hemisphere, Novembers hot and rainy, summer encroaching as Advent drew near. Dear friends and I gathered, some transplants like me, and explored how to create seasonal rhythms in southern hemisphere context. It was sweet, and life-giving to my soul, which threatened to cave in such a different climate.

As I let out another deep breath, my deep sense of gratitude was met with guilt. Why should I be so grateful for this November? Just how hard was it for my body, for my soul, to be displaced to another continent for so long? This question – the just how hard was it – is one that can haunt me. As in, just how hard was it for our children to leave the only life they’ve known to start over? As in, just how hard was it for my family to have us on the other side of the world for all those years? As in, just how hard was it for all those people, whom we love, that we left a few short months ago? I can sink deeply into the implications of that question, and surface far short of any answers.

I see our new home in the distance, windows all alit. It looks cozy and inviting. “Does this feel like home yet?” A kind guest had just inquired of one of my daughters over the lunch table. “No.” She’d answered simply. I could tell he was waiting, for some kind of explanation, an elaboration, but she did not offer one. I understood. How to put words to the vast emotional, relational, physical experience of starting over halfway around the world? I hoped our guest understood too, at least on some level.

Turning into the jungle of our back slope, I climb the last steep hill up to our backyard. Our sneaky path through our little patch of woods. “Our very own woods!” one daughter had exclaimed when we first walked through this house we bought, hoping it was a good decision and trusting that it would have to be. We laughed; not sure it qualified to be called a “woods,” but all the trees we would love, and our woods it would be called. I step into our backyard, and wonder how long it would take each of us to feel fully at home again. Would it indeed be three to five years, as our debriefers had said? That is a long season, I ponder.

Tears sting my eyes again. Gratitude still lingers in my heart. God will be with us, we know. He has been through all the movings, over all the years, in all the different homes we have known. This November is so different than the ones we have known for the last decade, beautiful in a unique way. Leaving my boots at the door, I step over the threshold into this home of another kind, in faith that God will make it so in time, to each one of us.

“The human soul needs actual beauty even more than bread.” [D.H. Lawrence]