Februarys are rough.  I remember my first one in New York, back in 2006.  I was walking home from the subway after work and felt a weight of sadness that I couldn’t explain.  Sure, I was broke and perpetually single, but I was living in Manhattan!  I was happy!  And I’ve never been given to the downward swings of depression (just irrational anger and defensiveness).  Where is this coming from? I thought as the frigid air surrounded me on the pitch-dark-at-five-o’clock streets.

Soon after, I read more about the aptly named and now relevant-to-me Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and wished I had money for a trip to a tropical island, or a heat lamp.  But just knowing the cause of my emotional heaviness made it slightly lighter, and I forged ahead into February with an uplifted heart.  Then I remembered that Valentine’s Day was right around the corner.  Sigh.

Earlier this week I felt that familiar winter disillusion.  I woke up and looked out the window and everything was wet and gray.  Gone was the white novelty of snow, replaced by cold rain.  On days like these, spring feels further away than a reason to celebrate Valentine’s Day did to me back in 2006–far enough for me to answer Shelley’s “if winter comes, can spring be far behind?” with, “Hell yes it can, Percy.  You and that groundhog don’t know shit.”

That’s where I was a few days ago, cursing dead poets and helpless animals, and so I decided to pray.  It went a little something like this:  I feel dead inside.  I know it’s based on weather and not truth, but it feels like the most real thing in my heart.  I want it out.  I need…to be inspired.  I want to feel alive.

Yes, Jesus hears even melodramatic prayers.  I climbed into the car and headed out of the neighborhood for a most decidedly uninspiring yearly doctor’s appointment, my bag of emotional weariness on the passenger seat beside me.  Then the music came on.

Looking back you know
You had to bring me through
All that I was so afraid of
Though I questioned the sky now I see why
Had to walk the rocks to see the mountain view
Looking back I see the lead of love

That was all it took, really–and why not?  What better place for God to show up than in music?  I put Caedmon’s Call on repeat and, yes, shed a few tears at the commonality of all biographies that don’t share you or me as the author, and are therefore personalized by love beyond measure.  Stories that matter not because of what my hands reach for, but for the hands that reach me.  Tales that include an inspiration not scratched and clawed at, but freely given.

I love my story.

I have forsaken the South in many ways over the years: refusing to wave at every person I pass on the street (The Husband has taken that mantle up for me and he’s not even Southern–oh for shame!), moving to New York, not making Junior League membership a top priority.  And loving winter, at least until February comes and I want to kill it.  But until then, I love cozy sweaters and stylish outerwear and snazzy boots.  I love visible breath and wood-burning fireplaces and packed snow.  I also love the orange leaves of fall and the first green of spring.  I love the seasons, all four, because there is something so necessary about each of them; something so natural and orderly and renewing about marking the passing of time with birth and death and life again.  And I have to remember all that when Shelley’s spring feels unreachably buried beneath Doppler forecasts swathed in green.  I have to remember that the seasons are as faithful in changing as the one who made them is in not.

But I don’t have to do the remembering all by myself.  He sends plenty of reminders–some set to music, some not.  Reminders in the form of a warm, dry restaurant and a table surrounded by people who have known me since college and are pouring sangria.  Reminders in the form of Post-It Notes from The Husband.  Reminders in the Much More to life that I happen to believe in and rest my soul upon.

I left the doctor’s office the other day and headed to my car in the parking deck.  To my left, I noticed a bank of ice left over from last month’s snowstorm, hidden in shade and clinging to life despite multiple rains and last weekend’s seventy degrees.  There are places in me like that, where light and life and truth take extra-long to reach–but they always get there.

Last Thursday, I drove over to our still-unoccupied but frenetically worked-upon house to meet The Husband and try out new paint samples that did not belong in the Baby Crap family of hues.  I arrived before he did (shocker) and pulled up in the driveway, keeping the car on because that’s how you keep the seat warmers on, and my butt had requested them.  Waiting there in the quiet of the front seat and descending nightfall, I had A Moment.

I thought about this season three years ago, when I was gearing up for a visit from The Mom and Dad and a Christmas-day train ride to Jersey to meet the Yankee fam.  I needed a little help feeling merry that year because I had just taken a risk that seemed to have failed spectacularly; in fact, I was reeling after a kind rejection from the guy I thought could be The One and the paired potential loss of one of my favorite friendships. I had never felt so enmeshed in my single status or so far from the possibility of true love.  I began to think that I would always be the fifth or seventh or ninth wheel at family holiday gatherings, the only unpaired person at the dinner table besides the lovable uncle whose marriage record rivals that of Henry VIII.

And now here I was, staring at the home where I will live with The One, a designation about which I happened to be correct if early.  I marveled at all the Chapter Ones I have mistaken for epilogues, all the wasted hopelessness, and even at how a thirty-year fixed mortgage, assload of debt, and abandonment of the city where I came to life can look like freedom.  Finally.

Pre-NYC, I was unaccustomed to practicing what I preached.  I kept my faith at arm’s-length and my plans buried in a mattress safe from the God I claimed to trust but whose intentions I secretly doubted.  After all, he kept messing around with those plans.  But then I was removed from my home and myself enough to see all I had counted out just because I didn’t understand what love could really look like.  And it clicked that there was a safer place for my treasure, so I packed it up and sent it north.  And so went my heart.

I remember when the venerable Jesse Ventura claimed that religion is a crutch for the weak, and I remember how angry I was at his insolence (and under cover of that anger, frightened that he was right).  I remember when I woke up to the fact that religion could not only be a crutch, but a weapon.  And I remember when it hit me that I was never meant for religion, but for grace–not a crutch, but the very air I need to breathe every moment.  I think of all the time I spent growing up in church, exhaustedly repeating hymns whose words bypassed my heart and flew over my head as I wondered when I could get back to my real life.  And now, what worship looks like: acknowledging that the bottom line is no longer Me but all that has been done on my behalf, acts of grace so huge and eternal that all I can do is humbly accept them and respond with voice and head lifted up; a posture which, uncoincidentally, is when I am most myself.  An act of response, not compulsion, to a love so full that it goes beyond the realms of simple comfort and trite encouragement and feel-good sentimentalism and rounds the corner into transformation.  So far beyond what I ever knew.  Such deep, pure rest. Such everything.

In a few days, our address will no longer have a Line 2.  The furniture we have sat on for the past two years will be relegated to basement-quality.  We are entering a state of permanence unrivaled since I left The Mom and Dad’s place fifteen years ago.  We’ll make a home there even as our ultimate home and treasure lie elsewhere, safely stowed with the only One able to keep it.

Last weekend two branches of the family tree descended on The Sis’s house when The Mom and Dad and my sister’s in-laws (a.k.a. my Yankee ‘rents) came to visit the Blessed Child and witness her introduction to Santa Claus.  Or Phipps Plaza’s version of him, anyway.  The Niece donned her red Christmas jumper and her white tights that were a little tight around the waist, a little loose around the feet…well here, I’ll just show you:

The Husband and I met the cavalcade in the center of the mall for the preordained fifteen-minute session and watched as The Niece initially freaked, then grew comfortable with the jolly old man who had just come back from his break (The Husband and I were so hoping we would have seen him on our way in, sitting at a bar with a glass of bourbon and muttering about “those damn kids”).

The family I had in New York didn’t have my blood, but they might as well have for all the closeness and life we shared.  They consisted of the Yankee ‘rents, who were always ready to collect me at the Hamilton N.J. train station and whisk me back to their land of home cooking and champagne.  Then there were my girlfriends, with whom I shared trips to Italy and the Jersey Shore when we weren’t leaving our mark all over Manhattan.  And finally came the BF-turned-Husband, who ended up being my true home in the city.  Add to these individuals all the communities of which I was a part, most notably that of an eclectic group of believers who met at Hunter College every Sunday, and you had a girl who felt surrounded by family and rooted in a sense of belonging–one thousand miles from “home.”

Our life in Atlanta is well-defined by family, with the sibling branches of both of ours residing here and The Mom and Dad not too far (but far enough…love y’all!) away.  On the days I worked at NYU in the city, I would walk five blocks home for lunch in an empty apartment (unless strange, unexplained workmen and clouds of dust happened to be there).  These days I’m not walking anywhere for lunch, but a ten-minute drive gets me from my office to Casa Sis, where for the first six weeks of The Niece’s life I was able to monitor her growth daily. Now I have to settle for an attention-starved dachshund (well here, I’ll just show you)

and a sleep-deprived new mommy who is working from home while her daughter thrives at daycare.  Making my way in the world took everything I had; now I want to go where everybody knows my name.

But there’s not a lot of room for revision with your family: they’ve seen you at your highs and, most memorably (and oft-retold) your lowest lows.  So as backup, I’ve been reconnecting with Friends from Years Gone By and learning how we’ve all changed after some time apart.  Whether it’s lunch in midtown or wine in Brookhaven (after getting lost on Peachtree and crying into my steering wheel–thanks for waiting, KP and go to hell, GPS lady) I’ve been blessed to reconnect with people who knew me When…and When is most definitely and thankfully many miles removed from Now.  And Now that I’m not a walker in NYC but a driver in Atlanta, I have a rearview mirror that shows me how far I’ve come…and a community of all types of family who remind me that everything old is new again–with a little redemption thrown in.

Now if only the Yankee ‘rents would move here too…we could always use more champagne.

At 9 am on Friday morning (okay, it was more like 9:10 and we were the last ones there, whatever), The Husband and I sat on one side of a large oak table beside our real estate agent and mortgage broker.  On the other side were the (about-to-be) previous owner of our (about-to-be) house and his agent.  At the head of the table was an attorney I’ll probably never see again, and in front of each chair sat a stack of paperwork to be reviewed by all parties and signed by some of us. Clearly, I was doing that thing where I act like I know exactly what’s going on as the grown-ups talk business and I secretly wonder how soon is too soon to reach into the bowl of Halloween candy on the table.

After an hour and a half of lawyer-speak and check-passing and John Hancock-ing, The Husband and I owned our first home.  And though I’ve experienced a cross-country move, my wedding, and the birth of my niece all since May, this was the first event of the year that brought tears to my eyes.

Being a girl with no shortage of emotional reserves (do not even MENTION the movie Harry and the Hendersons to me unless you’ve brought a box of kleenex and and industrial-size bottle of Afrin), I’ve kept waiting for the waterworks I was sure this year’s life-changing events would bring.  But instead, as each event has arrived, I’ve been gripped by joy and relief instead of tears.  As the skyline of New York faded into the green hills of Atlanta from my plane window, all I could think about was how thankful I was to have smuggled my best friend out of there with me.  When my wedding day arrived, all I could think about before walking down the aisle was how thankful I was to be hangover-free, rain-free, jilt-free, and wedding-planning-free.  And when my niece popped into the world, all I could think about was the healthy baby in my arms, the love that enveloped her, and the fact that I was not responsible for keeping her alive.  Joy…and relief.

Then came the search for a house for The Husband and me, the place where we would arrange furniture and unload wedding gifts and train a dog and, God willing, keep our kids alive.  And when we found the house, we focused on what we would do to improve it.  And it was all well and good and fun and theoretical–then we signed the dotted line and it became real. And taking on an inanimate pile of wood and bricks left a lump in my throat.  What the hell is that?

After a few days of thinking about it, I’ve had some insight into what the hell that is.  There is the pressure that accompanies being the people with whom the buck stops: this isn’t one of the many places I’ve lived before, where I held out my hand to pass a key and receive a security deposit reimbursement upon leaving. The daily upkeep and long-range condition of this house depend on us, not some management company.  We are financially and physically responsible for its well-being.  And if our Christmas decorations suck, that’s our reputation on the line.

Then there is the pressure that comes with buying a house that is too big for just us.  A house with four bedrooms, two of which remain unclaimed by us or guests, two that are screaming (or maybe that’s just The Mom’s voice I hear) for cribs and diapers and baby smell.  Not to mention the other rooms waiting to be populated by pieces of furniture, preferably not found on a curb in Murray Hill or purchased off Craigslist from a guy named Shasta who lives in a twelfth-floor Brooklyn walkup.  Buying this house is either a tempting of fate or, if you’re like me and fate has a personality and starts with a capital G, a huge act of faith.

But I realize that the emotion behind this purchase is not really about its occasional similarity to a pressure cooker.  As I signed the paper that put me on the deed to the house, I glanced over at The Husband and the slightly larger stack of papers to which he was adding his name.  And then at the leather-bound notebook he had brought along that bore the proof of years of work on our behalf.  Back when I was balancing on Cloud Nine and practicing the look of my name next to his and picturing my perfect wedding dress, he was saving and calculating and planning for our future.  He was putting money aside as I struggled to buy gum and worried about my next paycheck.  The home we have today is the fruit of his labor and his belief in our future.  All of which leads me to this: for all the planning and work and worrying I’ve done in my life, not one second of it secured my greatest treasures–they had to be received as gifts.

On Friday night, we opened a bottle of champagne at our Party for Two and sat in front of our fireplace on our camp chairs–the chairs that we took up to a rooftop in Manhattan where he proposed; the chairs that were our only furniture for our last weekend in the city as the rest of our stuff traveled across the country toward our future.  We sat in our home and toasted it, and I breathed a prayer of thanks for a life full of acts of faith taken on my behalf.

It took moving to New York for me to appreciate the season of fall.  (Let’s be honest, it took moving to New York for me to appreciate a LOT of things.)  Being surrounded by concrete and skyscrapers can really make a golden tree pop–and Central Park, in all its autumnal glory, is a sight to behold.  Every shade on the red-orange spectrum is represented, including some I had never known to exist.  Maybe I just wasn’t looking before, but I grew to love fall by living in New York.

As the temperatures in Atlanta have dropped, so have the leaves, and I’ve appreciated the golden hues here too.  But more than any other season, fall and its changes remind me of life in the city.  I think back to what I was doing this time last year, besides working on the Halloween costume: negotiating a respectable salary; wondering if the BF had had the conversation with The Dad yet; meeting AC for weekly dinners at our 30th and Park California Pizza Kitchen outpost; listening to Tim Keller live every Sunday night; counting pennies to pay for toilet paper.  Saying goodbye to that list was welcome in spots and sad in others.

And it leads to a reflection on where I am now: negotiating a respectable salary; receiving an email from The Dad containing a picture of Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade with The Husband’s name under it (TH received the email too; this is how my family shows love.  When we got it, I told TH, “He must really like you.”); spending lunch breaks holding my niece as she spits up and farts on me (and no one has ever done so more beautifully); listening to our new pastor on Sunday mornings, then Tim in the car on the way to work on Mondays.

This time last year, I was getting eviction notices from a corrupt management company; this year we are buying a house and planning a project that will both tear it apart and make it our home.  I’m spending Saturdays with The Husband going to tile warehouses and granite wholesalers and design showrooms and actually having fun instead of breaking out in hives like I predicted.  For a time in my life (i.e., the majority of the last five years), I thought I might be a perpetual renter and poop-dodger in the city that never sleeps.  And I had made a sort of peace with that: living at the poverty line (post-taxes) but affording nosebleed seats to the New York City Ballet; smashed like a sardine into an overcrowded can of people but finding reliable solitude on runs around the north end of Central Park; having no backyard but spreading a towel on my fire escape and watching the world go by.

I miss the city, and I let myself miss it.  Because acknowledging the sadness of loss doesn’t take away from where I am now and with whom I am sharing that Now.  It means my heart is big enough for both Then and Now, There and Here.  Things change: I used to hate fall because it meant another nine months of studying had just begun; now it shines with hope and possibility, even as old things fall away. For the rest of my life, whenever I see a tree gleaming with gold in the autumn sun, I will think first of New York, where so many of the gifts I’ve received in my life were revealed.  Including the biggest: a man, bearing no resemblance to Billy Bob Thornton, who made leaving the city a beginning instead of an ending.