Thanksgiving takes on new meaning the year that you move into a home, become pregnant, and read a book on gratitude that changes your life.

Of everything I could list, though–and this year’s bounty is knees-to-the-floor humbling–I am thankful most of all for grace, the gift that holds them all. Grace narrates my story and makes every part of it matter. It gives dimension to each character–especially to me–fleshing them out beyond the caricatures toward which I tend. It adds words to the music and music to the words. It makes the material blessings a gift rather than a crutch. It places me in a red room with a pumpkin candle burning as Christmas songs play in the background and a baby stirs inside, a baby whose father did the dishes this morning.

Grace, rather than keeping me where I deserve to stay, crosses the distance to retrieve me and bring me into the new season. My favorite season: pine trees and gingerbread smells and familiar tunes and twinkling lights and a baby boy in a manger and, in all likelihood, one in our own crib…new life in every possible way.