FINALLY! An update on the adoption process & stuff.

Hey everybody!

Okay, so I know this is WAAAAAAAAY overdue. A few months ago, we had another fundraiser yard sale, after which, I planned to post a blog entry about it. But life got in the way, and updating the blog kept getting bumped down the priority list and shelved until the next day. And a day turned into a week, which turned into a month. Ergh.

But I actually have a few minutes of free time right now before Ash gets home from work and we head out to do a full evening's-worth of errands, so here I am. Where do I begin? A lot has happened since we last updated.

First of all, we owe a HUGE heartfelt thank you to many people who have donated money, time, resources & items for our last sale. Chip & Holly Seelig: the result of your stealth fundraising work on our behalf was a surprise that moved us to tears, as did your words of encouragement. You two are so unbelievably awesome - we love you guys. Grandma & Pappy (Don & Shirley Kuhn): another surprise; your donation in a beautiful hand-made card means more to us than you could possibly know. We miss & love you and can't wait to get up there again. Thank you. Kathryn Finn: what you're doing with your jewelry sales for us was unexpected and is SO appreciated, as were your donations to our yard sale. So glad we could be a part of your wedding. Duane Brewer & Alberto Villalobos: you two could have easily sold your big-ticket items on e-bay or craigslist, but instead you donated them to our yard sale. You both rock. Thank you so much.

The amazingly cool thing is that our little boy is someday going to learn how many people wanted him here, and how many people gave of themselves to help make it happen. All of you are playing a huge part in this endeavor; we could not do it without you.

I don't have any photos from that last yard sale (I know, you're probably horribly disappointed - no pictures of strangers sifting through odd things strewn about our driveway). It was successful, even if I don't have any visual evidence to prove it. Emjae manned the ship again, and artfully so. We raised a little under $200 that day for the adoption fund, and we still have a few bigger items that didn't sell which we plan to put on craigslist as soon as this crazy holiday season is over.

The biggest news of all regarding the adoption is that we found our social worker and had our home study. For those of you unfamiliar with such things, a home study is a fairly elaborate process whereby your medical & financial records are combed through, your house is inspected, a whole slew of forms must be acquired and/or filled out, etc. It's a basic "get to know you" situation with your social worker, requiring a few meetings and a lot of paperwork.

Ashley was pretty nervous leading up to the first meeting, fearing that we would be discovered to be unworthy for one reason or another -- perhaps because our social worker would detect a broken part of our fence that hasn't yet been fixed, or maybe she'd think we could have done a better job of cleaning the upstairs toilet and thus mark "FAIL" on our papers. We cleaned the night before with a fervor that some might characterize as borderline obsessive (and by some, I mean me). Fortunately, she turned out to be a wonderfully sweet and talkative older lady who had lots of stories and was full of warmth, smiles and laughter. It felt like grandma had come over to visit. Totally not intimidating or stressful in any way.

And the best news of all: we passed with flying colors. We still are waiting on a few pieces of paperwork before she can submit it all, but it's looking good.

The next big hurdle is $3,000 due to the agency. Once we've gathered & saved enough to pay that, it's hurry up & wait for the next steps in the process and the next big chunk of money due. I have determined that it's a wiser move to let Ashley handle the specifics of the process -- she's absolutely GREAT at researching and planning. Me? Not so much. She knows all the details, I speak in vast generalizations about this whole thing. :) I'll have to ask her to post a more detailed account of what's going on than I'm capable of doing. What I do know (other than how much money we have to save and raise) is that there are some really exciting things that should be happening for us in 2011: our dossier, a referral, and two trips to Ethiopia. The 2nd trip will be to bring our baby boy home. I can't even fathom what an amazing year this is going to be; gives me the chills just thinking about it.

I'm much more aware of parents and their young children now than I used to be. I'm distracted by any example I see of a dad experiencing a moment with his child. I noticed a dad teaching his son to play checkers outside of Cracker Barrel. I noticed a man about my age with his wife and three young children at the tree farm looking for the perfect Christmas tree to cut down. I see dads all the time now, and I wistfully imagine myself in their shoes. I can't wait. It seems so far off, so unreal to me still. Sometimes it's hard to believe it's ever going to actually happen, but I have faith in God and know that our patience will be rewarded.

Hopefully, if all goes well, by this time next year, we'll be receiving the best Christmas gift we could ever hope for.

I'll try to do a better job of keeping the blog updated after the holidays.

Until then,
Merry Christmas and God bless.
JJ

Before I go eat a brownie...

Drum Roll Please...We have found our social worker! Which means the process is moving full steam ahead.

We received the package of forms a few days ago and instantly I was ON IT, like some sort of superhero in a cape. But today, while working on filling out the forms and answering some of the tougher, more personal questions, the emotional distance I've been putting between myself and the realization of how HUGE adoption is came crashing in on itself. I broke down. And I realized a couple things. First, I realized that I am an emotional sap... a big, soupy sap. And second, more importantly, I realized that love is easy.

I already love this child, and I love his biological mother and father. I've not yet been a mother, but having to consider the question "How do you feel about your adopted child's mother and father?" almost made me drop to my knees in thankfulness and tears. I cry at the thought of them. I do not yet know my future child and I do not yet know his darling mother, but I'm filled with gratitude and humility, faced with the overwhelming thought that giving up her newborn child so that he can have a chance to live out his dreams will probably be the hardest thing she'll ever have to do. I have no words. I hope she knows that God is good, and that I will love him like he is my own - because he will be.

Adopted children are shared. Shared by many people, in many places. They have two mothers, two fathers, and a God that orchestrates it all. I hope to meet their family; hug them and thank them while feeling completely inadequate and at a loss for words. How do you thank someone for their own flesh and blood? I fear you can't. I suspect that all the hope, gratitude, sadness and grace will be felt through a look, a glance, a silent thank you... and an unspoken I'm sorry.

I'm new to this. I love this. I want to soak in all of the glory of waiting, wishing, hoping, crying, and praying. I know God is good. His timing? Perfect.

~ Ashley

We have a date for the yard sale!

If you're in the Nashville area and you have anything you'd like to donate to our sale,
please contact me at: JJBenson34@gmail.com. Thanks!!

A HUGE thanks!! Excitement building...

First of all, we want to extend a deep, heartfelt thank you to some very gracious people who have donated to our adoption fund: Belinda Sullivan, Chris Hood, Dennis Board, Kimberly Mullin, Mary Fox and Steven Maldonado. Words cannot express our gratitude for your kindness. Anyone interested in donating, we've embedded a donation link on the left side of the page on this blog. :)


A few quick updates on how things are going:

• Going "public" with our adoption news has connected us with some amazing people who have firsthand experience with international adoption. I had no idea so many friends, colleagues and acquaintances of ours have either adopted or know people who have. We've been introduced to several new friends who have been really kind and helpful. Having a strong support group and resource for information has already paid off: we learned of a different agency than the one we'd initially planned on using, and this agency actually has a faster turnaround time and is less expensive!! Ashley's contacted them and had a great conversation with our point person there, and we just received all the application paperwork yesterday. This is a great thing, but faster turnaround time means less time to raise the funds due. So we're hustling to figure out ways to come up with the first $5,000. Lots of prayers, lots of brainstorming going on...

• Had a great time hanging out last night with our friends Brian ("Yogi") and Shannon Christian, who adopted their son Aidan from South Korea six years ago. I have no idea where Aidan gets all of his energy (wish I had a fraction of his seemingly endless supply); he's definitely a happy, playful kid. We were riveted hearing them discuss all the details of their journey, the ups and downs and the adjustments they went through, while sitting in the room with this beautiful child and seeing with our own eyes what God has done for all three of them. We left feeling even closer to the goal, though it still yet seems so far away. Yogi came up with a pretty fantastic idea to help raise funds for us -- we were already planning on holding another fundraiser yard sale in October. Yogi decided he and Shannon are going to have one as well on the same date and donate the funds to our adoption account, and he insisted on relaying the idea to everyone he knows all across the country, suggesting we hold multiple yard sales simultaneously for the cause! We're so grateful that they're planning on doing this. If any of you reading this blog are interested in participating, that would be amazing. Stay tuned, we'll be choosing the date sometime today (it will be a Saturday in October).
  

I guess that's about it for now. If you have any other ideas or input, we'd love to hear it! More soon. Much love to all of you.

- JJ

Our first fundraiser: a yard sale!

Hey everybody. JJ here. We had our first fundraiser last weekend: a yard sale! I wish we would have sold our yard (so I wouldn't have to mow it), but alas, this sale was not quite that literal.

Seriously, though, some fantastic friends donated items to this sale to help raise money for our adoption -- HUGE hugs of appreciation go out to Marcelo Chisholm, Cat Henneberry and Micki Heckman, Alicia Teasley, Erika Livingston, Kelsi Mason and Lake Hankal for their generosity.

Our super-awesome buddy Emjae made it a joint yard sale venture; she came over Thursday night to help get everything organized and in some sort of logical order.

Here is Emjae:

Emjae is a yard-sale guru. She has this process down. From the tagging to the sorting to the haggling with customers. Seeing Emjae work a yard sale is like seeing mid-90's Michael Jordan hit a pull-up jumper in the playoffs against the Utah Jazz. Most of us sorta dread the idea of sitting in the heat all day in our driveway, hoping to negotiate an extra 25 cents from a lady who is (for some reason) interested in that used, ceramic, giraffe-shaped ashtray. Not Emjae. That's her idea of an awesome Saturday afternoon. So we were happy to have her around for this one.

Emjae manned the ship for us Friday while we both were at work. We were pleasantly surprised to see a good steady stream of folks out yard-sale-ing early Friday morning before we left. We made nearly $200 Friday morning alone.

Our big-ticket items: an electric lawnmower, a table saw, two tv's, two Gazelle workout machines, tons of women's clothes and shoes, over a thousand CDs, lots of books and a large dresser/mirror set. And a driveway full of weird random things.

On day two, the morning was especially busy. Apparently yard-salers like to get out as early as humanly possible on Saturday mornings; I guess in hopes of getting to the good stuff before it's all been picked through.

Business started dying down around noon, and by 1:30 or so, Ash and I were ready for lunch and growing tired of sitting there by ourselves in the driveway.

So we closed up shop, dragged what was left back into the garage, then added up all the totals and were THRILLED to be able to deposit nearly $500 into our adoption fund account. This fundraiser will be a huge help in starting the process!

We had enough stuff left over from this sale (and more generous souls who have been offering more items to us) to warrant holding another fundraiser sale soon. It will most likely be sometime in October; not sure yet exactly when. We'll keep y'all posted so you can swing by. Be sure to bring a few extra bucks when you do -- you never know what other ceramic animal items we might be peddling. ;)

Our Love Story: "A Divine Accident"...

Hey there; welcome to our blog! JJ here. To anyone who doesn’t already know, Ashley and I are in the beginning stages of what I’m sure will prove to be an incredible journey: we’re adopting a child from Ethiopia. We’re so overwhelmed with emotion and excitement; it’s all we can think about.

Our plan with this journal is to document our thoughts, feelings and emotions as we go through this process. We want to share every step along the way with family and friends who are spread out across the country.

Best of all, it will be wonderful when our child is able to read our words and find comfort in learning how much he was wanted and loved. How much we prayed. How devoted we are to his future. And for him to discover how all things are a part of God’s plan.

Which brings me to how Ashley and I met...

Social Networking To The Rescue

As many of you know, I’m a musician, and I’m in a band called Groove Addiction.  Always looking to promote, I spent countless hours from 2004-2007 hustling the band’s music anywhere I could. Myspace, during those years, was the coolest new way to spread your music and acquire new fans across the globe – including fans in, say, Pennsylvania.

Neither Ashley nor I remember exactly how she ended up on my band’s page or how the two of us ended up communicating, but apparently the simple decision to accept a friend request started it all. Somehow, even with all the friends on her page and all the fans on our page stacking the odds against it, Ashley and I managed to discover each other’s profiles and connect.

We quickly bonded over sense of humor, regularly commenting on the other’s pictures and blog entries; I loved her wit and how it challenged me to keep pace. A casual online friendship between us began on Myspace and lasted several years. We drifted in and out of each other’s online lives, occasionally checking in to say hello, crack a joke or solicit the other for relationship advice. And that’s all either of us ever expected it to be. Until midway through 2007, when fate would have it that we each ended relationships simultaneously and suddenly found ourselves with a lot more time to log on and say hello. The more we talked to each other, the more we wanted to keep talking.

Conversations with Ashley quickly became the highlight of my day. I began staying up until the wee hours nearly every night talking to this girl I’d never met who was 700 miles away. Whether we were following random tangents and making each other laugh, having discussions about issues of the day, or delving deeper into our hopes, dreams, family and history, I found myself intoxicated with her words.

It was refreshing and unique to find myself falling for someone based solely on her ideas and the way she expressed them. Isn’t that what should really matter most?   

We both knew we needed to meet face-to face, and the sooner the better.

"So, yeah, um,… guess what everybody? I’m flying to Nashville to meet this guy..."

I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for Ashley to psyche herself up for the conversations she had with her family and friends after I bought her a plane ticket to come see me. It made no sense. You’re doing what? Going to see who? Have you lost your mind?

If either of my sisters or any of my female friends had told me they wanted to fly across the country to visit some guy they had met online, I would have seriously questioned their sanity and pleaded with them to rethink that ridiculous idea. So I understood everyone’s doubts, concerns and skepticism.

But in spite of it all, Ashley and I meeting was serendipity.  The way we connected was too perfect.  We were supposed to meet. We had to find out if it could be this good in person. So she packed her bags, got on a plane and headed south.

I’ll never forget how my heart was racing as I saw her face for the first time as she nervously descended the stairs into the baggage claim area where I was waiting. It was hard to focus and act normal. I was overwhelmed by the sheer weirdness of actually seeing – right before my eyes - the living, breathing person with whom I’d shared so many intimate, deep conversations online and on the phone.

Long story short...

(lest I end up writing an entire book about this)

In retrospect, we both agree that our first weekend together was sorta awkward. But there were some great moments. Enough of them that we both felt convinced that we should embrace the risks, follow our hearts and eliminate the miles between us as soon as possible. Two weeks later, Ashley made a bold, life-changing decision: she packed up her car and moved to Nashville. The doubts anyone might have initially had about it soon vanished. Ashley instantly bonded with all of my friends and became an integral part of the group. Before long, she and I made trips to Pennsylvania, Illinois and Arizona to meet each other’s families. I felt instantly welcomed and loved by her family, and she by mine. They all saw for themselves how easy and right Ashley and I are together. With each visit since, the love and bond with family continues to grow and deepen.

On a warm August night in 2008, after a whirlwind evening of laughter, wine and dancing at the Franklin Jazz Festival, I surprised her (and myself) with a marriage proposal in the parking lot as we walked back to the car. I had been working for weeks on exactly what I would say and how I would propose, but had no definite plan in place yet. I hadn’t even picked up the ring that I’d bought. This certainly wasn’t the time or place I had imagined, but the moment felt perfect.

So I dropped to one knee and asked her to marry me through tears of joy. She said yes, we cried together, we slow danced to the buzz of the parking lot streetlights, I put my key ring on her finger, and the rest is history.  We opted to elope in a beautiful, short ceremony at one of our favorite places, Arrington Vineyards, on July 3^rd, 2009. 

Marrying Ashley is the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. She makes me laugh. She makes me smile. She gives me strength and support .   And she continues to inspire me as she evolves in her faith, her love and her sense of compassion and wisdom. I’m a better man with her by my side, and look forward to tackling life’s challenges and triumphs together. 

We know how easily we might have never met. Every moment holds within it an opportunity; sometimes the seemingly small decisions start a chain of events that can change lives. We thank God every day that His will brought us together.

As we now begin our journey through the financial and emotional challenges involved with trying to bring this child home to us, we find comfort in knowing God will provide.  If we trust in Him, He will make a way. We’re eternally grateful that we’re saved by His grace.

***
 

"The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of 

another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth, 

beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of 

love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing. It cannot 

be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. 
It is a sort of a divine accident."

-Sir Hugh Walpoe