fall.

Fall comes slowly to the south, and just overnight, it seems, I look out my front window and see the trees turning colors, a dusting of leaves on the ground.

It’s our first fall with Gabe and Noah. I get dressed in the morning and put on a sweater against the chill in the air and Gabriel says, “Did you get a new jacket, Mommy?” I blink at him, because I’ve had this sweater for years, but of course he’s never seen it. He was a spring baby, come to me at the end of April, after we’d traded our winter layers for t’shirts and flip flops. We’ve passed two seasons together, but I have yet to know him in the fall, the winter.

Fall has been my favorite time of year since I was a girl, slipping on a sweatshirt, mixing up a batch of peanut butter cookies to nibble with my dad, watching football games. Fall is cooler weather — but not too cold — and crackling fires, and apple cider. It’s lingering outside, instead of dashing in from extreme weather.

Fall is comfort.

And this fall, more than any other, I stare around me with new eyes.

Six months ago, we doubled the number of children in our house, and had barely a moment to celebrate such a momentous occasion. Instead it was a little more like a terrifying, seismic shift in our very core, and for me these past months have felt very much like dying. Every single day. Dying to a way of life that was comfortable and familiar, dying to myself and what I want right now.

I have known a deep and visceral wrestling as I get up each morning and live in a way that everything inside me screams against, as I lay down my life. I’m no saint, mind you — many days I’ve laid it down grudgingly, making myself and the people around me miserable. I’ve obeyed the letter of the law and neglected the spirit as I stomp around fuming and frustrated, blaming everyone else for my misery.

And God is very, very patient. So much more patient with me than I am with others. Than I am with myself.

He is letting me die. He knows that this is part of my story, that all that selfishness and impatience was hidden down in my heart, covered by a nice veneer of control and manageability. He promised to make me like Jesus — that is, to make me free — and so he doesn’t shy away from the darkness inside me; He digs. He uses conflict and trial to draw the sin to the surface so that I see myself for who I really am, as one whose heart is desperately wicked. My children don’t need help — I need help. I’m thirty-three years old and still throwing tantrums when life doesn’t go my way.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an adult peering back over the course of my life thus far, it’s that God uses struggle to sanctify me, and so this dying is for my good. I believe that with every fiber of my being, even as I shake my fists against it some days. The dying is part of His blessing just as much as the settled peace of my salvation. And so these days I cling to the book of Hebrews, to my great High Priest who has been tempted in every way but is without sin.

He is enough.

And He is changing me, as my husband remarks one day out of the blue, “You seem more patient lately,” an observation that makes me want to immediately kneel in gratitude.

As I submit to this messy road, as I wake up each day and die and let God change me from the inside out, I also walk into the crisp world of autumn, and notice a very subtle shift. For six months we’ve been surviving, holding on for dear life, begging God to free us from the sin that so easily entangles.

And then, like a whisper, David and I find ourselves trick-or-treating on Halloween night, and there’s nothing but smiles. We go a whole night without tears or tantrums. We play with friends. We eat too much candy. We beam at the dusky faces we encounter in the neighborhood, certain there’s never been a cuter “puppy” than Noah, determined to trot down the sidewalk on all fours, barking up at the passers-by. We laugh and then we load up and take ourselves home with a van-full of flushed, happy faces. We feel … normal.

Just like that first sighting of your tiny newborn in a onesie, we pause to marvel over our little boys’ cuteness in skinny jeans and hoodie sweatshirts. And cuddling them in our laps in their nubby hand-me-down footsie PJ’s makes us melt as much as it did with our first two babies. Both boys run their fingers through my hair as I hold them, their own little way of hanging on for dear life.

You don’t get a lot of those moments at the beginning, when you adopt toddlers. You trade gazes of adoration in for battles.over.everything.

And so, like an arranged marriage, you start to realize that God makes some things backwards with adoption. You commit for life, ’til death do you part, even though you wonder who on earth this stranger is. You fight and repent and fight again. Instead of your biological baby clinging to you and then turning outward to independence, your adopted child comes to you turned outward, and only later on begins to slowly turns his head until you realize one day that he sees you. Then the clinging comes, the wanting to be held, a spontaneous hug, a gaze of adoration here and there, amidst the battles. It makes every other moment you’ve been through together worth it.

In our home, this fall seems to be a season for falling in love. It’s for moving beyond survival toward affection. It’s for knowing more bad days are to come, but soaking in unexpected moments of sheer delight, of the wash of relief just knowing that sort of delight is possible. It’s for seeing into the future, and feeling nothing but hope.

There’s a settledness here that feels brand-new and also very familiar.

Thank you for praying for us.