...I sat in my office at work.

For a couple weeks before, Nathan and I had been (secretly) worrying about a possible upcoming deployment and how it would affect our adoption plans and travel. Nothing was in stone about a deployment, but we still did not want to get in the thick of an adoption and then not be able to complete it...or it be delayed or something. We didn't want to knowingly do something that could jeopardize anything.

We had decided that we would probably put our adoption on hold, and just resume our wait when Nathan came back home. I had called & spoken with Marti, our CHI rep, about this possibility...and also about how Nathan's superiors were very supportive and that they would make sure everything worked out the way it needed to, IF he were in the middle of a deployment when everything happened. But then there was the issue of me having to be a single parent for the first year of parenthood...after waiting. so. long. to become a mother!

We just didn't know what we needed to do. But we sorta figured we had time.

And then the afternoon of February 22 rolled around. I was minding my own business, doing work, when my office phone rang. It was Marti. She asked how everything was going, and if we knew any more about what we were going to decide about the deployment situation. I was in the middle of telling her that we really wanted her opinion on what we should do -- should we put it off?? -- when she cut in and said, "Well......let me give you the situation here.......(huge pause)... I have a referral for you. And of course, there are risks...but if you think that things could work out fine, I'll be happy to send it to you."

What?? A referral??

And at that moment, somehow, I knew that things would be fine. I knew God was going to take care of us, no matter what happened. So I said, "sure. Send the info along." (I was waaaay more scattered than that, actually)

And a couple minutes later, this showed up in my inbox.

Fortunately, Nathan was in a conference here, in town (he would normally be at work, 30 miles away)...and I called him on his work cell. They had just let out for the day, and he was headed home. I asked him to please turn around and come back up here, I had something important to tell him. I'm not sure, at that point, if I told him we had gotten our referral. But when he walked in my office and saw that tiny, grainy, black & white picture...it hit us. This was our child. Barring any crazy circumstances, this was the little boy we would bring home whenever it was time.

Of course, he was maybe 2 months old in this picture...and when we received his referral, he was 15 months old. We had no idea what he was like "now"...but he still pulled at us. We had a couple days to decide whether to meet him...but I called Marti back that afternoon and told her that we were ready. Though we tried to be cautious, we had no true doubts that this was our child.

As a side note - I found out, a couple months later, by reading through a yahoo group, that Iliya had been someone else's referral only a week before. The lady he was referred to ended up opting out of meeting him (reason unknown, though, since she never returned to give an update on her situation - so there could've been a lot of things at play there). I will always be grateful to this woman...and I pray that - whoever she is - she is doing well and that the perfect child has come into her family.

So...yes. God has a way of taking care of us. He knows the Perfect timing, even when we do not...even when we think we know everything. The deployment? Ended up being pushed back a whole year, and since then, other things have come into play that will send Nathan to doing something else. If we had waited in OUR time, who knows what would've happened.

What I do know is that we would've missed out on a fantastic little boy who makes every day so special...with his smile, his NO's, his imagination, his concern for us.

As it turned out, one year ago today started out pretty normal, but ended up being a very special day. Iliya may not have realized it that very day. But hopefully, in time, he will have a concrete realization of how much we loved him...the day we received that tiny, no-resolution picture...and how much more, still, we love him, one year from that day.