Campaign Story

Hello, my name is Kristina Oates and I have been married to a ginger prince of a man named James for 11 years, the absolute best of my life. It seems odd saying that when you learn that in 11 years we have overcome job issues, unemployment, financial issues, many many hard transition, health issues, and of course going on 7 years of infertility. We know that we are never promised an easy life; and if the past 11 years have taught us anything, it is that sometimes the best things can come from the “hard” … our marriage is stronger than ever, we have gained resilience, a deep strength, a stronger knowledge and comprehension of Christ’s abiding love and saving grace, and a peace that we can do hard things and use those stories to comfort, aid, and guide others going through their own “hard.”

We met at Bridgewater College in Virginia when he tried to woo me with a Starbucks coffee and a chocolate chip cookie, and upon my roommate asking me “do you actually like him”, my immediate response was “eww, NO, he has red hair!” Well, luckily that year was spent allowing Christ to shape both of our hearts more towards him and a year later, I fell head over heals for him and he was my first and last boyfriend. He proposed to me right on campus of our alma mater 1 year after graduation and we were married on Mar 22, 2014. We were able to budget tightly and buy a small house with 3 acres near Harrisonburg, VA with plenty of forest, a walking trail, and a creek running through; we could just envision the backyard campouts, the fishing, the make-believe, the gardening, the summer dinners, the tree house building, and the star gazing that we would do out here with our future kids. I’m a homemaker at heart so when we’re not working at our jobs as an Operations Support Assistant at the James Madison University School for Professional and Continuing Education for me and Office Manager for the Office of Institutional Advancement at Bridgewater College for James, we love to garden together, make hot sauce, can veggies, cozy up around the wood stove, enjoy our chickens and their eggs, bring in fresh flowers for the table, and make our home a peaceful refuge for others. We always desired having kids to share this dream home with and to teach about our love for Christ, about nature, about serving others, about the wonder of the world. We feel like we have so much to teach and want to be taught by them as well.

We knew that both of our Moms had had fertility issues, however for some reason, with everything else that we’d already endured, it didn’t occur to us that we would add this to our list of hurdles … until we started trying in 2018 and discovered that we actually had male factor infertility instead (from what we knew.) As anyone who walks this road knows, it’s a huge financial, mental, emotional, and marital burden to carry even when you know that hope is not all lost. I struggled in addition because I so wanted to take away the feelings that my husband ended up having to deal with because of this diagnosis. We tried medication, all the “home remedies”, and 2 rounds of IUI. Even though I feel blessed to never have had the additional struggle of miscarriages, absolutely nothing happened. (We joked because with my PCOS I had slightly elevated testosterone and with his testing they found he had slightly elevated levels of estrogen, so it just seemed further proof that we were a perfect match for each other!)

Through much prayer we actually decided that being able to experience pregnancy was much more important to us than genetics, so we decided to spend the money to pursue embryo adoption in January 2022. This began the hardest year of our lives. Two weeks after beginning my Lupron injections, on Feb 1, 2022, our dear brother in law who was a campus safety officer at Bridgewater College, along with his partner, approached an individual to ask his name, unknowingly preventing a school shooting, and both were murdered in the process. The individual who we learned had been planning a school shooting after class luckily was apprehended quickly, but our dear brother was gone.

Fallen Heroes

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/02/02/bridgewater-college-shooting-victims-officers-killed/9312410002/

JJ was a BIG boy with an even bigger heart. His love language was COOKING … dang the skills that his grandma had passed down to him are legendary (and his special cheek kisses for his favorite sister in law 🙂 ). Good, old fashioned soul food with seasoning blends that would make you cry tears of joy and get a glimpse of heaven. He’d been in our life for 10 years dating my sister in law until they got married 6 months before he passed. He was a brother and he was MY big brother. Having grown up without siblings, it was special. J almost cried when we told him that we were going to start fertility treatments, he was SO excited. Lillian would have been his first niece and he would have been wrapped around her finger. We had to begin PIO injections the very morning of JJ’s and John’s 3000+ person joint funeral and our embryo was transferred on Valentines Day 4 days later. Hope comes from sorrow, though, because our dear daughter, Lillian, was born in October of that year and instilled a new sense of hope and joy in the entire family that we all desperately needed. She knows her Uncle JJ and his life, sacrifice, and legacy are forever part of her story.

Now that Lillian is almost two years old, we desire to pursue embryo adoption again. We have such a passion for it now and we want Lillian to be able to have that joint camaraderie and connection in a sibling or siblings. With all that has occurred and all we have endured even separate from the six years of infertility, finances are always in our mind. We budget as tightly as we can, we thrift, we save, we prioritize, and we go without to do as much as we personally can financially. Unfortunately a needed “new” vehicle, needed complete roof replacement on our home due to leaks, and needed new washing machine, all within 4 months of each other, completely zapped all of our budget and now we are at the place to figure out where this cost is going to come from while also maintaining financial wisdom and security for our current and future family. I know that we are not the only deserving couple, but we would be honored to be chosen by anyone willing to help us along in our journey. Please help us to bring another treasure into our family. Thank you.