Hello to all the lovely Vintage Sunshine readers!
I am so grateful to call Alyson my friend, both online and in real life! We met in the Fall of 2011 in southern california at The Threadery handmade market.
Today I wanted to share a bit of my story. My name is Jen and I blog at rellas bellas and have a shop too. I closed my shop last fall and recently opened it back up with a whole new purpose, to help support our adoption fund.
I have been struggling with infertility for almost three years. Some of those months have been worse than others. We have tried a few different ways to get pregnant via medical help but have not had any luck. We decided to go with adoption instead of IVF {in-vetro fertilization} to have our first child. It is still weird for me to write those words: adoption and IVF.
Every day I find myself wondering why we were given this journey. I have to remind myself the Lord doesn't give you anything more than you can handle. He has a plan for us, a much grander plan than we can even imagine or understand. Scott and I talked about adoption even before we were married. We knew we wanted to adopt, we just didn't know it might be the only way for us to have kids.
As 2012 ended and 2013 started I could feel the Lord nudging me to make adoption a reality {you can read more here}. We are still in the very early stages of making our adoption a reality. We are reasearching which agency we want to use and in the mean time we are working on raising the funds we need. We are pretty positive we want to do a foreign adoption so we know we will probably need to raise about $30,000. When I think about that number I get a bit clamy and it is kind of hard to breathe. That is A LOT of money. We didn't even pay that much for our car. Saving up $30,000 seems beyond overwhelming. Again, I have to remind myself God has a plan. I have to remind myself to put my faith in him and he will make it happen.
The same time I felt the Lord nudging me to start looking into adoption I also felt him telling me to pursue some of the shop ideas I had last summer that didn't transpire. After a lot of prayer and chats with my husband and bff I opened my shop back up with a whole knew look and purpose: hand painted necklaces to help support our adoption fund.
I didn't open my shop back up in hopes of selling thousands of necklaces. I wanted to be creative again and painting is so relaxing and therapeutic for me. I have also decided to pay it forward with my necklaces. $2 from every sale will go to Mocha Club. I was introduced to Mocha Club last fall at the Influence Conference and was moved to do a Purpose Project with them. I raised $400 to rehabilitate a woman in Africa from the sex slave industry. The project changed my life in a way I don't think I will ever be able to really put into words. I love everything Mocha Club stands for and giving back a little bit of every necklace that helps our adoption makes my heart happy.
Because I love Alyson so much and I want to offer all of you amazing readers a discount to the shop. Use code "sunshine15" through March 31st to save 15% off your order. Be sure to check in often, I am going to be adding lots of new stuff to the shop in the next few weeks.
Follow along with our journey:
3 comments:
Love your story! Thanks so much for sharing it! I walked along my friend adoption, and let me tell because the Lord was in the midst it went according to plans, money was saved, given, delivered by people they didnt even know! He is now 3 and we have loved him since he was 7 months, God is a way maker, trust and believe that he can do it!
Thank you for sharing your story! As a person who has been through infertility and who has an adoptive family, I know how important (but also how hard) it can be to share your story. I appreciate your candor and wish you all the best in your journey. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me!
i love this, thanks for sharing and can't wait to check out her blog!
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