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. ;)