Excuse me sleeve, can I have my heart back? Nevermind, keep it!

To be saying this ONE day after our profile books have been received by our agency is crazy, but it's true, there is a dear birth-mother who is hurting and a precious baby that needs a home. We have agreed to show her our profile. This does not mean that we will be chosen, this just means that among other profiles, ours will be shown and have a chance to be chosen. Folks, it doesn't work like this, we were assured, and yet here we are putting our hearts out there, trustin' Jesus and praying hard. So please excuse me if this blog seems a bit scattered, my mind is a little crazy at the moment.

Those who have known me for five seconds, know that I put my heart out there for the world to see. I could have just met you and if you mention something dear to my heart, I will show you some tears and I will be proud of them. Those tears come from knowing and experiencing heartache myself and let me assure you, my tears are genuine.

Our Heartache

We love children and have known from our beginning that we wanted a family. Growing our family has been the challenge. Some women struggle for years to get pregnant and my heart aches with them. We have been struggling for a year, but we knew that we didn't want to try for years and years just for the faint hope of conceiving, we wanted a family. I am emotional person and most of the time my emotions lead me in the right direction, I have learned to trust my emotions and intuition. But, sometimes they lie to me and cloud my judgement and make it difficult to hear God's whisper. ALERT: time to Brag On My Man. Early on in my relationship and marriage to Brandon I began to understand that my husband was and still is an easy going guy and usually pretty laid back in terms of planning. When big decisions have come up, I learned to pray for God to lead Brandon in the right direction, so when he states, "let's try for eight months then we will start the adoption process," I have learned to trust that this is from God. It has now been about a year since we began trying to grow our family and there have been muiltiple times when we thought we were pregnant, with no success. Let me tell you, if you have never struggled with infertility, it is maddening. At first, you allow yourself to hope because you have no past experience to compare. Every month without success, you lose more and more of that excitement, while your negative tests every month laugh at you as you feel less and less inside. It wasn't long before I became jaded with getting pregnant, I just wanted to be a parent, pregnancy did not matter to me. I felt very strongly about this for a few months, until last month.

It was last month that I actually felt pregnant and was so confident of our success. My food cravings changed, I started experiencing food aversions, that never happens, and I just felt so different than all of the other times. I kept my excitement contained, but secretly I hoped and I prayed, all day, every day, I prayed. I found adorable baby onesies, and bought them. I began buying beloved children's books. Now, I would have bought these anyway, but for some reason, feeling pregnant gave me the guts to actually purchase them ahead of time.

So, you can imagine my surprise and disapointment when I discovered that I was not preggo. It wasn't until that moment, that I decided I don't have to be ok with not being pregnant in order to be wholeheartedly into our adoption. I don't have to choose. We would love be pregnant, and if the good Lord blesses us with pregnancy we will be overjoyed. But, let me tell you, we are 100% thrilled about adopting and choosing a child of God. This child will be our child with no distinction between adopted or conceived. This child will be loved unconditionally, cherished beyond belief, praised and disciplined for their benefit and lifted up and encouraged so they can bless others. This child of God will know that we wanted and chose them for our forever family, not because we couldn't get pregnant, but because we wanted them more than we wanted to be pregnant.

If you are struggling with infertility, I am praying for you and every other woman who has struggled prays for you. There is no advice that helps or makes it feel better. The only thing that helps is a friend to listen and a shoulder to cry on. I hope that I can be that shoulder for someone the way my friends and family have been for me.

Back to Our Profile

There is a possibility of our profile being chosen and if we agree then we will be officially matched with a birth-mother, this fee is the largest payment we will make yet. We are still fundraising to help offset some of the expenses. If you would like donate to our adoption we have several ways for you to get involved.

1. Please be in prayer for us and our family and those struggling with starting a family.
2. We are selling adoption t-shirts for $20 and all proceeds go to our adoption
3. I am offering photography sessions for donations
4.You can donate via youcaring.com/prayloveact

Thank you for partnering with us!

~Brandon and Nichole~