Fundraising update...

If you look to the right, you will see that people have been SO generous, and SO incredibly loving to help us cover the cost of our upcoming home study! It is such a blessing! We are one step closer to bringing home our baby :-)

As I have said before, there is no way I could ever adequately express the amount of gratitude that overwhelms us. We are working on a few different ideas for proper "thank yous", so hopefully very soon I will be getting those out. However, for now, to those who have donated, I just want to say a big THANK YOU! You have a very special place in our hearts, and no words could ever do justice to the gift that you have given us. Because of your generosity, we can move forward in this process. We thank God for your heart, and your presence in our lives, no matter how close or distant. Thank you for this gift, for your support, and loving our little one so much already. Thank you!

We are going out of town this week to visit some family, but once we return, we are expecting to get on the ball with the home study. Once that part is out of the way, we can begin preparing ourselves for the "selection" part of the process, where birth parents choose us as adoptive parents. Financially speaking, this is the next big phase. We are hoping to be able to apply for some grants, which could potentially cover much of the cost of the adoption. I still encourage and ask that people donate, though. Nothing is set in stone, as far as the grants go, and there is no way of being able to tell if we will be granted any money. We still have a long way to go to reach the total cost, but just as this first week of fundraising shows, nothing is impossible! God is good.

We are also working on some other fundraising opportunities outside of the blog. I will reveal the details of these events as they begin to unfold. Continue to check back here to see what is happening.

Again (and I'll say it countless times more), thank you for investing in our story. Whether monetarily, emotionally, physically, or spiritually, it means more than you know!!

Bringing Baby Moore Home...

We are calling on you. Yes, you. If you are reading this, you are either a frequent visitor here at this blog, or you have stumbled upon it via shared links on Facebook, recommendations from someone, or maybe even a Google search for something random or not so random...I don't know what reason has brought you here, but I am glad you are, nonetheless. Especially today.

You may or may not know us, my husband and I, and you may or may not know our story. We are on a journey and have been for a while. We've probably been on this journey far longer than our minds may want to wrap around, but we count it as "going on 3 years now". It's a bittersweet journey, hence the name of this blog, but it's one that has taught us about God, about who we are, and about the strength of our relationship with one another, more than words can ever describe. I'm talking about our journey to parenthood.

I'll refer you back to this post if you would like to know all the details, but basically, our image of parenthood looks much different to us now than it did in the beginning. What we once perceived as crushed dreams of becoming parents, we now know as the rebuilding of our faith in God and the birth of a brand new passion within our hearts. Although we are not giving up our dreams of someday conceiving naturally, we know without a doubt that no matter how different it looks to us now, this is where God is leading us.

ADOPTION

Currently, we are working with Bethany Christian Services and we are pursuing a domestic infant adoption. Basically, what this means is that we will be adopting within the United States. Soon there will be a woman, if not already, who will find out she is pregnant, yet selflessly decides that it is in the best interest for her baby to be raised and cared for by someone else. Once she comes to that conclusion, she will begin searching for that adoptive family for her child. She will scour pages and pages of biographies, photos, and stories until she is confident in her heart of hearts who she will choose. Our hope and prayer is that we are those parents. Once we are "selected", we will wait out the duration of the pregnancy, and once the baby is born, God willing, he or she will go home with us.

And this is where you come in. We need your help. Desperately. Fortunately, and unfortunately, adoption costs money. A lot of money. $21,000.00 to be exact in our case. Looking at that number terrifies me and inspires me all at the same time. It terrifies me because obviously it's a huge number for any one family to come up with in a short amount of time. I am convinced that numbers like these are often times what turn many families away from adopting. For Jeremy and I, the "how's", as in "how is this gonna happen", or "how are we gonna come up with that much money" go unanswered. But consistently, God has challenged our faith. He has challenged our trust. "How?" God asks. "Me." He answers. However, this number inspires me...because I know its the only thing standing in the way of us going from just "Jessica & Jeremy", to "Mommy & Daddy".

We have to believe that God is so much bigger than this mountain of money we currently face. We have to press on, and trust that where God leads, He will also provide. So we're going for it, and we are excited to see what God is about to do!!

“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible." Matthew 17:20

You faithfully answer our prayers with awesome deeds, O God our savior. You are the hope of everyone on earth, even those who sail on distant seas. Psalm 65:5

So here I am, asking for your help. Whether your help comes in the form of financial donation, or in the form of praying for and encouraging us through this process, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts! Please understand, that this is not for us. Of course we desire to have a baby, but above that, we desire to provide a life, a home, and a lot of love to a baby who might not have these things if not for adoption. Above all, we desire to be obedient to the calling that has been placed on our lives to adopt whatever child God has planned for us, no matter the gender, race, or ethnicity. We cannot do this without you.

We want to be very transparent about where the money is going, so below you will see how it is broken down.

*Application fee......$550.00 (we already paid)

*Home Study fees...$1,000.00

*Support Services fee (Case management, education, marketing/networking, profile presentation, birth parent expenses, etc.)......................$6,000.00

*Placement fees (Counseling, adoption consents, legal fees including finalization, post placement supervision, etc.)........................$14,000.00

There it is. I know it's a lot, but I also know that it is completely possible. Obviously finances are the biggest obstacle right now. However, we also understand that not everyone can give monetarily. What is not so obvious is the emotional roller coaster that we are about to experience. Adoption can be such a long and trying process. That is why it is so important to us to have people praying for peace, strength, patience, and so much more, not only for us, but for the birth parents as well. If you have children, I'm sure you can imagine how difficult it would be for you to choose an adoption plan for your child. Imagine the strength it takes preparing for the day to hand over your child, sign away your rights, and live the rest of your life knowing that someone else is raising your baby. Your prayers throughout have just as much impact and are just as important and needed as the money. I hope you will prayerfully consider helping in whatever way you are led to. We are forever grateful for your loving heart!!

So let's do this!! There is a grey box in the right margin where you can donate your money. As people donate, that box will continually update so that we can track the progress. Please feel free to pass this along and share with others who may want to help. If you would like to contact me, visit this link to send me an email, or you can leave your questions, words of encouragement, or comments below. I will continue to update as the process changes and as we get closer to our goal.

In advance, your generosity means more than I will ever be able to express here. I cannot adequately describe what this adoption means for myself, and for my husband. We have prayed and waited for so long for a child, and we are so grateful for your willingness to help us. Your act of generosity is two-fold, you see. Some day we will have the privilege of looking into the eyes of our child and telling them of how many wonderful people were faithful in seeing this miracle through. Not only are you giving a child a home, but you are helping to fill a very empty space in our hearts. My heart swells with gratitude and love for every soul who has invested in our story.

Much love, blessings, and thanks to you!!

From the bottom of our hearts!!

Stay tuned...

This adoption process is moving along more quickly than I could have ever imagined!! We are currently gearing up for our home study. We need all the love, prayers, and support possible to make this happen! Please be on the look out in the next few days here on the blog for some ways you can help, and get involved to bring our baby home. We can't do this without you! Thanks =)

Waiting Here For You...

Came across this song the other day, and I completely stopped, mesmerized. What a beautiful lyrical picture of this waiting thing. Waiting on God. And being faithful while doing so.



Faith seems to be a true test right now for myself, and so many others around me. It's especially hard to have faith when time lines surround you. How many years now? How many miscarriages? When is this bill due? How long did the doctors say they will live? How long since you've been employed? The How's, the Why's, and the When's take their toll on a person's faith. Especially when there are no answers.

faith
[feyth]
-noun
1. Confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability
2. Belief that is not based on proof

You won't find this post jam packed with earth shattering answers or explanations. I feel like my faith is tested every day. I struggle so hard sometimes knowing that I serve a God who everyone claims to be so faithful, so loving, so BIG, and all these things, but at the same time allows some of the most painful circumstances to wreak havoc in so many lives.

I may or may not know what you are going through. You may or may not have any answers, or closure, or maybe haven't been given any hope for the future from the world's standards. You may not see any light at the end of the tunnel right now. You may feel alone, deserted, punished, forgotten, defeated, crushed...Maybe you're even questioning if God is even really there. Let me just tell you, you are in good company here. In a lot of ways, I'm right there with ya. I don't have many answers. So many questions still remain unanswered.

BUT...

I am waiting for God. I am still working through life's circumstances, and days still exist when I just wanna give up on God, but truth is...giving up on Him still doesn't give me answers. You may feel like God isn't there, but I can assure you that the world will never be able to fill that void that He can in just a matter of timing. Tap into your faith. God wants for us to just BELIEVE. Believing even though there is no proof. Worshiping through it. Praying through it. Crying through it. I know it is hard, and I am so sorry for whatever it is you are facing. I know you feel like you can't do this anymore. Let yourself believe. Let our Sovereign God carry you through. He loves you. He knows your pain. He is the only One who can heal your heart, and make beauty from your ashes. He is worth believing in...He is worth trusting in...He is faithful if we just believe.

Here we go...

It's funny how things start to really feel real just by turning in a huge packet of paperwork. We've been working on this paperwork since the beginning of January. Like most people, I'm not one who enjoys the tediousness and repetitiveness that comes along with filling in what seem to be endless blanks. Hundreds of questions, and empty printer ink cartridges later, it's complete. We've answered self assessment questions, revealed our financial information, and over analyzed and picked apart our deepest desires to become parents. You'd think by now we would be overly confident in our readiness due to the amount of paperwork we've pondered, and number of checklists I've scoured. But the looming question still exists: Are we ready for this?

In our preparations, we've agreed, disagreed, argued, compromised, laughed, cried, comforted, and interviewed one another, just to name a few. We are barely into this process of adoption and we can already see what a beautiful and messy journey this about to become. And now that it's beginning to seem very real, and we are about to experience another phase/step in the process, we are becoming more and more invested and attached emotionally than any one person could ever prepare for.

There are not many absolutes right now. We are not absolute in our parenting styles yet, nothing has been "approved" about us yet, we haven't been chosen by a birth family yet, we don't know if we will end up with a baby boy or baby girl yet, and we absolutely don't (despite any amounts of paperwork or training classes) feel prepared yet. I don't know if we'll ever feel "prepared".

But the things I do know for sure:

I want this so badly. My heart is 100% in this.

My husband wants this so badly. His heart is 100% in this.

We may not have it all figured out, but we are willing to take any risk necessary to look into the eyes of our child every day. We are ready for that kind of love.

Whether we feel prepared or not, we know that we serve a loving, merciful, graceful and very faithful God who will give us every quality we need to get through it.


So...here we go. Next up is our home study. Pray for us =)

A cycle?

This is the week I say good-bye to my kiddos. I have two days left with them before they hit the road to GA. It's bittersweet to say the least. While I scramble at the thought of what I will do with myself every day without them here, I am also looking forward to some free time. But knowing myself, I give it a few days before I'm ready to drive to GA to pick them up from school and kiss their sweet faces. They gave me some sweet gifts in preparation for our parting. I now have a beautiful picture of the three of us adorning my media console. Catherine asked me yesterday what I'm going to do on Monday instead of watching them. I told her I will probably lock myself in the house and cry all day. Her response? "Well at least you can look at our picture while you get depressed." Little booger. I love them.

Yesterday I woke up to a very welcomed surprise. **Disclaimer** Before I go any further into this paragraph, I just want to remind you that this is a blog all about our ups and downs to parenthood. This paragraph may or may not consist of a detail or two that you may or may not want to know. While I am not an advocate of going too much into detail, I do feel that some biological details are necessary to fully tell our story. If you shudder at the word period, then stop reading. Before I woke up yesterday morning, I had been on a cycle of 332 days. Basically, it had been that many days since I last experienced a period. That last period, nearly one year ago, happened because it was medically induced by synthetic Progesterone. After that "menstrual induction", since it was ineffective, we just kind of let it go. Okay, we completely let the issue go. We just figured that it was better left in God's hands. So, 300+ days went by with nothing. Not a symptom to be experienced. I felt fine, I functioned daily, and just went on with life as normal. Then all of a sudden, yesterday morning, it happened. Out of the blue. I spent the day reintroducing myself to the feeling of cramps, relocating all of my "supplies", and rejoicing for the first sign in a very long time that my body works.

For all this time, my prayer to God was just that He would move my body in His perfect timing. All of this, medically points to something being wrong. This absence of a period has obviously been the result of my body not ovulating, which we all know is one of the main keys to getting pregnant. So doctors were always on the hunt for that reason why it was not happening. Between me and God, I just knew that He had something to do with it. Although I've always been gravitated towards the world's reasons of why, I knew deep down that God had this. And I can say that because with my DEEP desire to have babies, there is no earthly way I could have gotten through this past year with absolutely NO answers, had it not been for God's presence in my life. Only He can bring a calming peace like the peace it has taken for me to get through the past year.

So you can imagine the excitement that came over me when I realized that my body was doing what it is supposed to yesterday, AND all on it's own. At the sight of it, I was more convinced than ever that prayer works. Just the other night, a woman prayed very specifically over my body. I'm talking very specifically for me to have a period. Hello!! Prayer answered.

Slowly but surely as the day rolled on, however, the cramping began to lessen until I couldn't feel it anymore, despite my choice to refrain from pain relievers. Those cramps were a sure sign to me that it was still happening. But, soon they were gone, almost as suddenly as they arrived. And whatdoyaknow, the bleeding subsided as well. All in the same day. Weird, I know. Part of me wants to curl up in a ball and let discouragement and pity have its way with me. But the other part of me still rejoices. There are so many questions, but there is only one answer in our situation. We've been praying for this to happen, and God made it happen. Sure I wonder why for only one day, but we also did not pray for a specific number of days. I was just yearning for a sign that God's hand is in this. And He showed up in the very way I hoped that He would. That was enough for me. At times I have struggled with the fact that I felt like my faith for God to do something miraculous here was all for nothing. But I feel so strongly like this was just a small way for Him to show me to keep the faith. To keep believing. To keep praying. To pray specifically. And maybe, just maybe, He knew that I needed a fresh reminder that He is still here and still in control. Does yesterday's surprise mean that I ovulated? I don't know. Does it mean that I will ovulate or have a regular cycle again? I don't know that either. But it did remind me how powerful He is. How loving He is. And how good He is.

We are also gearing up for a training meeting with the adoption agency on Monday night. The more I look at the bigger picture, the more amazing things look to me. I mean, could all this period stuff happen at a more ironic time? Here we are pursuing adoption, and God says Oh hey, here's a new cycle for you! He is so much bigger than we are. There's no irony with God. He has it all figured out, we just think that we do.

My kiddos...

I sat across from him tonight at the dinner table while he tried everything in his power to get me to do an impression of a chameleon lizard. He told me that this type of lizard "points one eye up, and one eye down." I told him that this would be very difficult for a normal human being to do. His response? "No it's not". Then this 5 year old did his best impression.



She just scarfed her chocolate cupcake down, in typical 7-year-old-insulin-dependent-diabetic-starving-for-sugar fashion, and bluntly reassured him that what he thought he was doing, he was in fact, not doing. Just what a big sister is good at.



This, of course, crushed him and made him cry. He wanted so badly in that moment to be a good chameleon impersonator, but she crushed his dream. So I told him that he is the best lizard that ever lived, and made her apologize even though her observation was correct. He dried his tears, accepted her apology, and then challenged her to a game of Toy Story Memory. She accepted.

In this moment, I realized that times like these, of me helping to resolve conflict between brother and sister are soon to be over as they make their way to a new home, in a new city and new state. Seven years of memories flash before me, and it makes me emotional. I'm their favorite "babysitter", although I prefer to use the word "nanny". I have watched them grow up. I have taken care of them. I was there to pick them up from their first day of school. I was there when she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, and we learned together the scary highs and lows of blood sugar levels. I went to the hospital on the day he was born, and marveled at the miracle before me. I have disciplined, comforted, entertained, and loved them, and I know that by having the opportunity to do so, the past seven years with them has confirmed within myself how badly I want to be a mother.

We've been through a lot together. All these years have made for some tough times, but we have been able to learn together. It's been quite the experience for myself, and for them as well. I've learned how to be patient, and I've grown to appreciate the beauty behind their imaginations and playful spirits. I can't count the number of times they've begged me to be the horse in their make-believe stories. Numerous times I tried to pawn them off on one another because I didn't feel like "neigh-ing" and crawling around on all fours with a child on my back. But they never let up, expressing how much it would mean to them if I just tried. They've helped me to realize the importance behind making them a priority, even if it just meant a few minutes of my time devoted to "just for pretend" games. They have learned to trust me. They already have a mommy and daddy who they adore, and I had to recognize, especially in the beginning, that it is difficult for them to be away from their parents. There was a time when they cried for what seemed like forever after their parents left for a night out. But with time, and consistency, they allowed me to wipe away the tears and help them gear up for Nerf gun wars (with the help of my husband), and endless rounds of hide-and-go-seek. And I'll never forget when they began to tell me they loved me. Their walls came down, and they opened themselves up to me. They began to trust me with their feelings, their little tiny secrets, their dreams, and even their lives. A day came when mommy and daddy weren't always available, but I was. And they were okay with that. After their "Momma" of course, I was the next best thing.

What began as a simple way for me to earn a few dollars on the weekends when I was in high school, has become a part of my everyday life. It has become so much more than just a job to me, being their nanny. I don't know what the heck I'm going to do with myself after they're gone at the end of the month. To be honest, I cringe a little at the thought of a new "babysitter". I secretly hope she won't be very interesting, and that their time with her will be spent wishing they could be with me. I am tempted to make them pinky promise me that they will not love her. Although, despite my fears of them forgetting or not missing me, I know deep down, they will always remember. They are my kiddos, after all.