Fate or Random Chance?

That was a question put to me recently on a forum. Do I think that Katie's referral to our family was fate or random chance?

We started looking at agencies in February 2005 - before I turned 29.

We chose our agency without contacting any of the references, we went with where our hearts were pulling us. The agency that we felt God wanted us to go with. There really was not any rhyme or reason as to why we chose it, other than it was the one that felt right.

We applied to our agency in November 18, 2005, when I was 29.5 years old. We had all intents and purposes of being DTC the day after my 30th birthday. If you are at all interested in what happened there, go read some of the archives here. If you still want to know more, email me.

We were DTC on August 18, 2006. Notice, that is EXACTLY 9 months from application to agency. We didn't make DTC by my 30th birthday.

We got our 171h approval on August 1, 2006. We got the email from our agency that we were approved for SN on August 1, 2006. :)

We changed our "maybe" to a "yes" for heart defect in September 2006 (I think it was early September). I remember we did so after finding out in mid-August that we were comfortable with the heart defects listed in a few SN children referred but we were never asked to review their files because we had it as a maybe. After getting clarification on what Yes meant and what Maybe meant, we changed that one answer as we truly were comfortable with heart defect.

At church, during Mission Friends, Samuel was given a map of China to color. He drew a smiley face on the map. I kept it thinking "wouldn't it be cool if Katie was from that province where the smiley face is." He did this in late August 2006 or early September 2006 as it was the first country studied in Mission friends that year.

Katie was born on August 1, 2006 (the day we got 171h approval and the email saying we were accepted in the SN program with our agency). Which means she was conceived in November 2005 around the time we applied to the agency. Was February 2005 important in her parents' lives in some way? I wish I knew.

She was from the Yunnan province, which is where Samuel had drawn the smiley face in late August or early September 2006. The same time frame she was taken to the orphanage (or declared abandoned). It would have been this time frame that the orphanage made the decision to place her for international adoption.

She entered the orphanage and was diagnosed as having a heart condition around the same time frame we updated our SN application to say YES to heart defect.

Late September 2006 our church hosted a Worldcrafts Village craft sale. I bought some of the crafts from China. They were all from the Yunnan province.

Katie is 3 years and 10 months younger than Samuel who is 3 years and 10 months younger than JM.

Katie has a birth mark on her foot, and the doctor had not seen one before (looks almost like a stuck splinter of wood). I have the exact same mark on the bottom of my foot.

I wake up grumpy in the morning, as do the boys. Since Dh is the one always waking us up, I am not sure how he is upon waking. Katie is possibly grumpier than I am...if you can believe that.

I love chocolate. Adore it. Crave it. So does Katie. Her reaction to seeing the jar with the M&Ms is just too cute (note to self, get it on video soon!).

Fate? or Random Chance?