How do I encompass the past year in one post? How do I adequately express the way that our lives have changed, from the subtle to the extraordinary, in 500 pithy words?

I guess I don’t.

As I was driving Harry to daycare on Thursday, a pack of blueberry muffins and his “1″ crown in the back hatch, I had an epiphany.

We talk often about God’s faithfulness, and how our story is an example of it, but I realized that all this time, I’ve had it all wrong.

Our story is not about how God has been faithful to me. It’s never been about me.

It’s about Harry.

Even in just his short life, God’s faithfulness is drawn all over it. From protecting him in his birth mother’s womb. To giving her wisdom to make the choice for life and the choice for adoption. To pouring out His peace on her. God knew that Harry needed a family, and we are so blessed that He called us.

On our second anniversary, in May 2010, Aaron told me that he still wasn’t ready to move forward with adoption. I cried so hard that day that I broke all the blood vessels around my eyes. My husband didn’t understand. “I didn’t say no,” he said. “I just said ‘not yet.’”

This is significant to me when you consider that I never shed one tear not once over a negative home pregnancy test. (And there were  many.) But that day I cried so long and so hard that my tears left a mark. Because I knew without question that adoption was the plan for my life, and I didn’t understand why I was having to continue waiting.

A few months later, leaving yet another doctor’s appointment with no good news, I called Aaron and said, “I’m done with this. Let’s move on.” And this time he was ready too.

We moved quickly. I flew through the home study paperwork, and every typical hurdle was easily cleared. Our social worker was able to schedule our in-office home visit and our at-home visit within days of each other. Our FBI background checks came back in mere weeks, whereas some couples wait for months. Because we’d lived in another state within the past five years, we had to get additional background checks completed as well. Our social worker, when she heard they’d be coming out of Atlanta, was not optimistic, as there are a few cities that are notoriously slow. They were back in record time.

A printer that works regularly with my previous Georgia employer offered to print all our profile books at no cost to us.

I sent off completed applications while our social worker was writing our home study, so that when it was ready, we simply had to send a copy of it to the agency. We sent it it to them in early November 2010.

So when my phone rang on the afternoon on Nov. 19, I thought that was why she was calling. To confirm the recipt of all of our stuff.

Not to tell me that a baby had been born. A baby who needed a family.

It was all, really, in His time. Had we been ready any later, we wouldn’t have been available.

One of the children’s books that I read to Harry has a line where the mama fox tells baby fox that she thinks baby fox’s birth mother prayed for her (mama fox), as much as mama fox prayed the birth mama fox.

“I think she prayed for me as much as prayed for her.”

I know that He heard both our prayers. And that we were both then, and now, and always will be, praying for him.