.A Year Ago Today.

It was exactly a year ago that I was prompted to visit, for the first time, our agency's waiting child list. This was a list of children that met no one's referral requests because of specific special needs or the age of the child - usually over three.

To my complete amazement, the very last child on the list was my son. I knew it as soon as I opened his photo. He had not been born from my womb, but in that moment he was born from my heart.

He was 8 months old at the time. He had spent his entire life (minus two weeks in institutions). He was listed as baby boy Yonas, and he was diagnosed with chronic severe malnutrition, and bilateral blindness. He was the son we had been waiting and praying for.

Today Jamesy who was once fatherless, motherless - familyless, now -a year later at 20 months - has a family who loves and adores him. A daddy and a mommy, a sister and a brother who have been blessed beyond measure by this beautiful bright-eyed little boy from Ethiopia. I never planned this for my life. I never guessed it.

But I would not change a single thing.

I will never ever understand why God chose me to be his mommy. I feel inadequate and undeserving, as I do of all of my children. There is no doubt in my mind that God orchestrated Jamesy to be in our family, though. Not a day goes by that I do not rejoice and marvel at this picture of the gospel running crazily around my home.

While orphan care is definitely for every believer, adoption is definitely not, but it was for our family.

And I cannot imagine our family any other way.

What a difference a year makes.

To read the full version of "finding" Jamesy read here, here, and here.

To see all of Jamesy's 20 month portraits simply like my blog's facebook page.