First of Many Tiny T Posts

I cannot tell you how many times a day I visualize our sweet baby.  We have no idea if Tiny T will be a boy or a girl or if he/she will have dark or light hair and truthfully, it doesn't matter.  We are so excited that we can hardly stand it.  We have waited so long for the opportunity to be parents and that sweet baby has no idea how much they are loved already even if they are only in our hearts.  I am going to try harder to keep everyone updated as we continue with the process.  We have chosen an agency that we want to use.  With that being said, I guess things can always change, but as of right now, we will be heading to Abilene, TX in February to attend an orientation with the agency.  We are so excited because that will be one of the beginning steps before we are eligible to be matched.  We ask for your prayers as this all begins and that everything will go smoothly and then we will be approved.  And please pray for the birth mother.  I have thought a lot about who she is and I have prayed for her.  No one should ever be angry at a birth mother who chooses to give her child a better life than what she feels she can give.  There is a difference between walking away from that child and putting that child in the best care possible.  I am always grateful for my adoption, but as we begin the process, it puts things in so much more perspective.  We are sending in our pre-application tomorrow and we are like little children with the excitement of Christmas on their face.  This will be one of the best gifts that we have ever received.  

Jade Britton has done an amazing job with Adoption Tiny T.  She has put together an entire online auction that just blows me away.  She is has a heart of gold and we will be forever grateful! If you are online, check out the Facebook Auction- Adoption Tiny T.  It will begin this Friday night, December 12th at 6:00 PM Central Time.  They are awesome items that would be great for Christmas gifts or any gift or if you just want something for yourself. :)

Love to you all,

Jinnie

Is This For Real???

So it's really been a long time since I have blogged.  I have thought about it multiple times and almost felt silly doing it, but I have a whole new reason for blogging today.  Here is my disclaimer for you English people...I am terrible at grammar and I'm okay with it so please don't judge me.

So it's in the wee hours of the morning the day after Thanksgiving 2014 and on Thanksgiving morning, we woke up in our little apartment knowing that we weren't going to be spending Thanksgiving with our family.  First time in 34 years for Jeremy and 31 for me.  It was strange, BUT we woke up to a message from a friend that said, "read my post. Love you." So I checked Facebook and was shocked at what I saw and even more shocked to see what the rest of the day had in store for us....
You see, Jeremy and I have been married for 8.5 years and together for 10.  We met at my job when he came in to pay his insurance(I love our story) and even though it was quite some time before the love connection was made, with the help of others, we found each other and hit it off and it was amazing.  We became best friends and have been ever since.  We decided when we got married that we would wait 5 years before we started a family, we wanted time to learn how to be married before children came along.  Well that didn't exactly go as planned and actually none of it did.  A little over a year after we were married, we decided it was time to start trying for Baby Thornton.  Fast forward 7 years later and there is still no Baby Thornton.  I cannot explain the heartache that comes with infertility when you have waited your whole life to get married and have babies and when you know that you can't give a child to someone who would make the best daddy in the world.  There were a lot of tears shed, a lot of doctor visits and medicines and that was with my regular OB/GYN.  Finally, in 2010 at the insistence of my mother, we found a fertility specialist and started going to him.  He was great, but after the testing, he sat down with us and gave us the news that completely broke our hearts.  He said it was possible for us but it would require at least an $8,000 procedure and there were no guarantees.  Well we were not wealthy by any means and $8,000 is a lot of money and still not knowing for sure the procedure would work so we left in tears that day with a decision to make.  We opted to try the procedure and were going to save for it.  Well, several things happened over the course of the following months after that doctor visit.  We had been unfaithful in our spiritual life and through the help of some great friends found our way back into church and started attending faithfully and soon after made the decision for Jeremy to attend preaching school in Memphis.  Preaching school was a stress and blessing like no other and so again we put off having children.  Jeremy graduated in June from preaching school(SOO proud of him) and we started our first work in Marion, AR.  We have talked a lot about adoption and even spoke to an adoption agency at the end of last year.  Adoption holds a very special place in my heart because I am adopted. I was adopted when I was almost 2.  My story is different than most because I was not in an adoption agency and I actually knew who my birth parents were and still get to see and talk to my birth siblings.  So Jeremy and I have talked a lot recently about adoption, we have bought books to read, I have read things on the internet and even started an Adoption board on Pinterest. Several people know that this is something we wanted to do, but didn't have anything set in stone.  It's expensive to adopt and we weren't sure how we were going to do it and for those who don't know, I am a VERY prideful person. I hate asking for help.  This is where God's providence comes in, we woke up this morning to that text and read Facebook and a dear friend(Jade Britton) had posted about trying to help a couple raise money for adoption.  Keep in mind, I had not talked to her about this recently and aside from a Facebook post about National Adoption Day or my Pinterest board, I know she didn't know that Jeremy and I had been seriously discussing it.  God's providence.  She has taken it upon herself to help provide us with the greatest gift(aside from salvation) that we could ever have.  She has asked businesses to donate items for an auction, she has pleaded with the Facebook world to donate money to a Paypal account that we set up after talking with her and much to our complete shock, people are donating.  I cannot begin to tell you how this makes us feel and to be quite honest, we went thru the whole day yesterday saying to each other that we didn't know how to feel or is this really real? Yes, it is real and we didn't ask her to do this but her through God has decided to help us and we are humbled.  We have wanted this for so long and the thought of it actually happening is so surreal that I can't even explain it, but I sit here with tears in my eyes thinking about all the wonderful people that have given to help us and how amazing God is for all the blessings that He continues to give even though we are undeserving.  So thank you all for the help and my biggest request is that you please pray.  We understand that becoming parents isn't something to be taken lightly and we will need all the prayers we can get.  We want to provide a child a home, but not just any home, a Christian home, a loving home, home where they feel safe and secure.  We want to raise a child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  Tonight as we ate dinner, we discussed baby names.  I can't tell you how many times through the years, we have done this, but this time seemed different.  Love to you all and thank you is not near enough to express our gratitude.

For those who don't know us very well,
Jeremy is a minister for the Hwy 77 church of Christ in Marion, AR.
I work as a secretary for the Memphis School of Preaching and I am an independent consultant for Tupperware.
We have been married for 8.5 years and it's been a fun time.  We are each other's best friends and keep each other on track.  He is a wonderful godly husband who has the most amazing patience ever. I am thankful to be by his side.  We love to laugh and our marriage has had lots of laughs and lots of love and I would be lying to say that we haven't had our downs too, but that's life and and marriage and that's how it goes, but we have put God first in our life which has made the biggest difference ever and we will always have Him there and know that we will never give up on each other.  That's just a small part of us, if you would like to know more, please ask.

And now the reset of the story (I always loved Paul Harvey)…
   Now that Jin has been able to tell her take on things let me give you mine. To try to explain everything about us in a brief blog would be impossible, so lets keep it simple. I am married to my absolute best friend. I fell in love with my wife the first time I laid my eyes upon her (this is a true statement). I told my dad I would marry her just moments after meeting her for the first time. I have enjoyed every minute of our marriage. My wife is my rock. She has helped me to become a Christian and pushed me to stay a Christian. Our life is filled with happy times together, and with my other best friend Mr. T (our 8 year old Yorkie) I never thought I would be head over heels about a dog, nor allow one to be in the house, but I love my dog as if he were my human child (prior to him I could not stomach people like this). Jinnie and I have a great life together but there is one thing that is painful for us from time to time. Both of us have always wanted children, Jinnie has dreamed about this from her childhood and the fact that my mother owns a daycare and my always being around children I too want as many as we possibly could have. But unfortunately Jin and I were told that we are unable to have children without really expensive drugs and procedures and the success rate would not be 100%. Over the past few years we have grown accustom to knowing this dream would only be a dream for us. We have looked into adoption but this was very expensive also. At some point we just chalked up parenthood to being one of those things we would only dream about, well until this morning. To receive a text from someone and Facebook activity that we have received today is mind blowing at the least. If you are reading this and want to help we want to express our heart felt thanks for your generosity. If you cannot give or do not want to thank you for taking time out of your day to read our ramblings, but if you are unable to give finical support we would ask that you please pray for us. We have prayed fervently to become parents. Sometimes we thought God was not listening and other times it was all that we could do, but we still believe in the power of prayer. Thank you all so much. May God bless you all in everything you do.

Jade and her son came up with the name Adoption Tiny T.  You can join the group on Facebook and we will do our best to keep you all updated through it all.