One year ago today...

January 3, 2007.

The details of that day are so vivid in my heart and mind.

We had prepared for that day for over 2 years. Thousands of prayers had been uttered, mountains of papers filled out, stamped, authenticated, certified, sprinkled with magic dust.

And here we were.

Scott was at work, Hunter and Ella at home, still on Christmas break. I was trying to keep busy, between my 5, 289 visits to the computer. We knew it was coming and the anticipation was almost unbearable. When I am waiting for something, I have a slightly insane aversion to anyone talking. That becomes a problem when you have an excited 6 year old and an excited 4 year old in the house. My mom called to see how I was doing and I think she quickly got the picture and offered to pick up Hunter and Ella and take them to a movie.

God bless that woman.

Once the house was quiet, though my stomach was turning flips by the minute, I felt much better, that I could now concentrate on just how crazy, excited, scared, and nervous I felt. Sometimes a girl just needs to concentrate on her crazy. Thankyouverymuch.

At about 11:00 a.m., we got an email saying our agency had received a package containing referrals! We knew our group was in there b/c the prior month we'd missed the cut-off by ONE DAY. At least we knew we were next. But then I started to worry our referral would somehow be missing from the pack. The clock ticking on the wall was making my head hurt as I waited for the phone to ring.

Scott was in a big meeting at work, so we were emailing all morning. I'm sure he was very productive that day.

Sometime around 1:00 p.m. THE PHONE RANG - oh my, this is it, I am about to give birth! And I've never been the home birthing type, in any way shape or form.

It was Erin, from our adoption agency, and she had something to tell me.

We were skipped, I knew it, just say it Erin, just say it.

"You have a beautiful baby girl! She's 8.5 months old and is residing at Xiushan (pronounced Shu-shan) Social Welfare Institution."

me: "We got a referral???" Duh.

E: "Yes! And she's got chubby cheeks and not much hair, do you want to hear more about her."

me: "Yes!!!! Double yes!!!"

E: "Her name is Xiu Fu Zhu, she was born on 4-18-06 and..."

Upon hearing her birthday, I LOST IT. Completely and totally lost it, as in the ugly cry kind of way. Don't know why it was her birthday that did it for me, but it did. In that moment Piper Grace became a real live person to me, my baby, and I hadn't even seen her picture at this point. She had a birthday. She'd been born in April. I love April.

The rest of the story can be read here. Start at the bottom of the page and work your way up. I read these posts this morning and relived every sweet moment, so thankful. So very, very thankful. I can't imagine living my life not having experienced this. Piper was so worth every minute of difficulty it took to get to her.

The Lord is faithful. Very little of the adoption process played out as we expected. But His ways are truly higher and better and more rich in every way than ours.

Happy 1 year referral day anniversary!