Yesterday was two years.Two years since we drove into Delray Beach for the first time.
Two years since we rode around in the back of our pastor’s white minivan, seeing all the places we’d been dreaming about for the past 14 months.
Two years since we came home to a place that felt so strange and new.
And every new season that comes, my heart still feels a little stuck. Because Florida is home now, in all the familiar, settled-in kinds of ways. But it’s still not completely normal all of the time.
Especially fall.
Summer here is the weather you dread, not the weather you look forward to. So fall doesn’t have that achy I-miss-summer quality or the excited surprise of cold that I’ve known all my life. I feel all the other fall sensations coming on, but there’s no boots and scarves and falling leaves and pumpkin patches…
It doesn’t feel like fall to me yet, because I’m not used to what fall feels like in Florida…still.
And I get a little achy for a “real” fall.
And I start to feel a little displaced in my home…because it’s still not that deeply ingrained level of comfortable, where every part of your body knows and anticipates what’s coming in a new season. I’m still learning my home…
And my husband and I are about to embark on a new season of work for him and I’m feeling all the new and excited and nervous all over again. And those feelings are whispering and echoing the memory of arriving here…the whisper of that fragile excitement and nervousness of moving to a new place with no job or apartment or idea what it really looked like.
So some days I feel all achy and confused, wondering where summer went and wishing for fall yet reminding myself that beach weather is back. And some days I feel jittery and excited with the first breaths of cool air and the sight of school buses and reminder that just two short years ago all this familiar was strange and exciting. And some days I feel scared and excited and nervous for new steps all at the same time.
And somewhere in the midst of it all, in a few small ways, I’m still trying to make Florida home. I’m looking back and looking forward, yet still trying to remember to soak up the moments as they come.
I’m trying to feel what fall is here in Florida and to let the feel of my home sink in a little deeper and breathe deeply into this season of learning home. Because next year, I’m hoping that fall will feel a little less achy and strange, when the sun is scorching the 2 o’clock buses and the traffic is getting worse by the day and we’re taking evening walks once again and trying to find time to head to the beach.
Because in spite of the achy and the odd and the exciting, I wouldn’t trade these past two years for anything. Because even though there’s places and seasons I haven’t fully settled into, Florida is home now.
When God called us here, He made special room in our hearts for this place. I’m so thankful that He made this place home for me in a way I would never have imagined. Because there is nothing more comforting than being where God has called you.
So I’m resting in our calling and trying to soak this fall feeling into my bones and trying think about fall candle scents even though fall in South Florida feels kinda funny.
I know that I’m settling in to our calling, into here, on a new level…and it’s good. And I’m learning that it’s okay that there are levels and season of settling deeper into home. And I’m trying to breathe deeply into the seasons and the settling-in process and this learning my home. And in it all, I’m praising Him for all He has done in these two years.
Be blessed
<3
