amazed and thankful!

Okay, for those of you who have not heard, our first adoption fundraiser was a success!!! We actually have deposited $1350 into our adoption account! We sold EVERY thing that was donated to us to sell (except a few things for baby that I could not pass up that I would've had to buy new anyway!) Our adoption fund is growing and we are just so amazed that this was so successful. It was fun to hear reactions from people when they learned why we were having the sale and where the money was going. It rained a little on friday morning but still we made more money that day than we did on saturday. I'll tell ya what, people will buy anything! And they love to bargain with you. I would like to say that if it were not for my mom and and Eric's dad on the actual day of the sale, we would've been in major trouble. They were such a huge help getting everything out and somewhat organized, even though there wasn't much time for that. People were literally waiting outside the door for us to bring things out of the garage for them to pilfer through.....seriously, amazing! This was a lot of work, from going around to everyone's house and loading the stuff up, unloading it into our garage, organizing it, pricing it, then organizing some more, and then finally selling it...but it was worth it!

I don't know that I have feel this kind of exhaustion in a while. I really thought on saturday afternoon that I was coming down with the flu. But, no, I was just that dang tired! Eric was as well. My body just ached for some reason. But we got some rest and it's back to work tomorrow. Thank you so much to all of you who donated stuff to us. Obviously, we couldn't have had the sale without you all and appreciate so much your generosity. Thanks also to everyone who has supported us through prayer and just calling to ask how it went and offering help when needed. We love you all and are just truly thankful for your love and support. We are so blessed!

FUNDRAISING!!!!

Hello everyone!!! It is 12:38 am and our garage sale is technically today! I am so pumped! Eric and I just finished putting up some signs and are about to get in bed. My mom came up yesterday to help me price. We tackled the entire garage full of stuff and actually priced it all. Mom, thanks for being such a trooper! We had an overwhelmingly large amount of clothes, at least is seemed that way. Today, as I was dragging them all out, and right in the middle of them all, about to break down cause I just did NOT know where to start or how to organize, Julie and Kenny came driving down the street. I was like, 'Hallelujah!' Julie is the QUEEN of yard sales, shopping them and hosting them! I don't know if I have ever been so happy to see her :-) We got all the clothes semi organized and just in time for Eric and I to head out to the hockey game with mom and dad. Nothing like leaving everything to the last minute and then, packing my day as full as I possibly can! (In my defense, I have been working a little bit crazily lately) We were able to enjoy the game knowing that everything was pretty much ready for the sale. So thanks to our parents! Yall are the best ever! Eric has taken the day off to help me with everything during the sale. So, as a last minute request....anyone who can come out and see us...please do! (and maybe shop a little, too!) Please pray in the morning that our efforts would be blessed. oh, and we will be out on saturday, too! Love you all! Goodnight.

busy-ness

well, once again, it has been a while. We have been extremely busy this last week or so. I worked night shifts the past two weeks and was reminded about why I did NOT like it! But, the blessing is, that I got to do all the stuff I wanted to do around my work schedule....the beauty of p.r.n. We had our last training last night that we actually have to attend. We will be completing two more in the next two weeks by email. This weeks training was focused on the core issues involved with adoption. They are loss, rejection, guilt and shame, grief, identity, intimacy and relationships, and control issues. I was reminded of the separate set of struggles that our child will face in life, in addition to the ones that would've come anyway. My heart felt so heavy and sad for my baby. At first I felt a little uneasy, just at the thought of struggle and difficulty. But quickly my mind went to the thought of how an innocent child is just born with a set of potential struggles that in a better place, would not be. I am feeling very priviledged that we get to parent this child. We will be the ones to help him/her work through these struggles. We will help him know who he is. We will bring him security. We will teach him through our actions about intimacy and relationships. We will model for him healthy boundaries (I hope!) We will accept him just like he is. I know that our baby needs us for all of these reasons. He will need God to be his shepherd through this difficult thing we call life, and with great hope and lots of prayer, we will show him, through our lives and with our love, who He is.

Our garage sale is this weekend, friday and saturday. Please come out and see us! We would really love it! Also, please pray for the sale, that it would go well, that it would not rain, and ask that He bless us immensly! Not because we deserve it, but because we don't deserve it. It's because of His grace that Eric and I are even on this journey. His grace is what sustains me. His spirit leads me. Please, pray that He would extend His grace again, so that we can bring our baby home.

puzzle pieces

Last week was a tough week. It seemed like more than usual, I saw pregnant women, or learned that friends were pregnant. On Thursday I went to my obgyn with some fullness in my left lower abdomen and just wanted to see if the cyst that was present before was too big or was causing any problems. My doctor was surprised to find that my ovaries are polycystic (I actually do have PCOS) If you don't know, PCOS is not that big of a deal and can easily be treated. Basically it just makes it harder to get pregnant. Well, the funny thing is, that last year before we started started seeing a specialist, I asked my doctor if she thought maybe my irregularity in my periods could be that I have PCOS, and she said no that she did not believe I had it. I felt okay with her answer and went along with the treatment plan of going to the fertility doctor which has ultimately lead to finding out that Eric has some infertility as well as I do. As I was standing there in the doctor's office, I just wanted to scream at my doctor, "I TOLD YOU I HAD PCOS! WHY DIDN'T YOU TREAT ME A YEAR AGO AND WE NEVER WOULD'VE HAD TO GO TO THE STUPID INFERTILITY DOCTOR." It was really all I could do to get out of her office without bursting into tears. I wanted to pray, but didn't know what to say. I wanted to call someone, but didn't know what to say to them either. So I just cried. really hard. all the way to murfreesboro. I was overwhelmed with sadness about our infertility. I wanted to be pregnant, and I was so angry at my doctor and wanted to blame her for our infertility. After a good cry, I began to think, 'what if we had've known that I have PCOS...what would've been different?' I realized that had we known that, my doctor would've treated MY infertility for much longer before sending us to a specialist, with hopes that she could help us get pregnant. But when she sent us to the Fertility Center, we found that Eric has male factor infertility, which eventually led to us deciding to adopt. (go back and read my very first blog) So, in conclusion, God is in control. He knows the child that will soon be needing us. He knows how much we need this child. Only in His perfect timing will we meet this child. We would not be this close to bringing our child home, had things gone differently in the beginning. We might not even have decided to adopt at this point and might have been still amidst fertility treatment. I know that God is sovereign. I think that when we have our child and we are able to look back over the journey, we will see how God took us out of circumstances and took our child from it's circumstances and brought us together. It will be like a finished puzzle. Last week was definitely one of the pieces of the puzzle falling into place.

I just want to say thank you so much to all of you who have responded about the garage sale and also for leaving such encouraging, sweet comments on our blog. We LOVE reading them and really feel loved. In a book that I read called 'Hannah's Hope' about infertility, the author talks about how she just really needed people not to necessarily try to understand what she was going through, but just to give a listening ear, give support, or to just love her well through it. I feel all of those things from all of you. Not just through the blog, but day to day as well. She is right. It makes the loss of your childhood dream for your life (which sometimes isn't even realistic) seem easier to bear and much more 'normal' (for lack of a better word). I feel so excited about our adoption and our new journey in life. I attribute that a lot to the Lord and how He is changing us daily. But I am writing this morning just for you all to know that I believe that He has used all of you to comfort us, to love us, to help us have new perspective, and to turn our hearts toward the Lord instead of away from Him during this difficult time. So.....THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts to everyone! Old friends, new friends, and even perfect strangers....we are thankful for you all.

the best traffic jam ever

So, I am sitting on I-24 this morning in what the radio guy called "a parking lot" trying to get to work. This is not a normal thing for me, because most days I work 10 minutes from my house. But, today, I was working at Baptist and had to be there at 8:30. Evidently this is not a good time to be going to nashville for any reason. Okay, so I am sitting in traffic today and all of the sudden, completely out of nowhere, and I mean completely out of nowhere it hit me, 'Our baby is in it's birthmom's stomach, growing....it's alive...it has a heartbeat....if i were to see the birth mom right now, her belly would be sticking out....because she is carrying our child!' I don't know if my brain has just been thinking that the stork was going to drop our baby off on our doorstep, or what I was thinking. But, I definitely had never really thought about the huge possibility that our baby is already conceived and needs care and protection...right now! 9 months is a long time. So, if we meet our child in april, that means that our child was conceived right when we were making the decision to adopt. If it comes earlier, then that means it was even BEFORE we had decided to adopt, that this child was being conceived and was meant for us! Today was another first. I felt very emotionally attached to this child and actually cried with emotion because of how much I was longing for our baby. I want this baby. I want to hold him and say I love you to him. I can already tell that parenting is very emotionally overwhelming. Today, I felt like a Mom.

I am praying now, for our baby. I'm praying for health, protection, nourishment, growth. And for the birthmom, as she could be struggling in this minute with whether to parent or to make an adoption plan or to abort even. I believe this to be the most important, most loving thing that I can be doing...praying. I invite you all to join me in this priviledge to pray for my child.

grace that is soooo enough

Praise the Lord, our paperwork is finished!!! Woo-hoo!!! We actually hand delivered our precious package to the Bethany office ourselves yesterday. We had an infertility consultation/interview. We are so relieved to have that behind us, however, kinda nervous because that seems to make everything so much closer now. In reality, there are several more things that have to happen before we are placed in the waiting family pool. It just seems that since the paperwork was the only part of this whole thing that we really controlled the timing of, that now it's out of our hands. I am so freaked out when I think of suddenly having an infant in my home that I am responsible for. Pregnant people have 9 months to prepare for it all. I want to start getting prepared, so that I am not just crazy when we are chosen. But after going through disappointment after disappointment with our infertility, I feel that I should protect my heart somewhat, and not get ahead of myself or of God. If it is a year before we bring our baby home, I really don't want to be sitting around counting the days until then. So please pray for us that we can find a healthy balance in this.

Talking about our infertility journey again was good, but I don't want to do it anymore! no, just kidding. It was very validating for me. I was encouraged that our feelings of loss, grief, jealousy, sadness, anger, confusion, resentment....all are and were normal. It was really hard to be reminded of the reality that those feelings are not gone from our lives regarding infertility just because we are adopting. It was hard to hear her say that we may even experience some of these emotions despite our new baby being home. It was hard, I think, because I do not like pain. I do not like infertility. Sometimes, I do not like God's plan for my life, at least not at first, I don't. But if anything has come of this struggle, for me, it is that I have found joy in it. Not so much happiness and fun at all times, but contentment with the Lord and trusting that He is working all things for the good of those who love him. I may have said this before, but for possibly the first time in my life, I have found myself in a place of despair, weakness, sorrow, and actually been able to praise God through it. Not ever perfectly, of course. We were at church several weeks ago singing that song Blessed be the name of the lord that they play on wayfm ALL the time. Heard it a million times, but this time, I was singing it and my heart just was arrested again, like it was when he first led us down this path. For once, while in what felt like total darkness, I still really believed that God is there, and real, and intimate and IN CONTROL, and I was so, so glad.

I do not like pain. I do not like infertility. But, by His grace, my heart is slowly learning to like His plan. And the crazy part about it all is that His grace meets me right where I am, never changes...ever, and is completely free.