Ashley and Tommy’s story began at Marian University in 2013.
Ashley was studying Elementary Education, and Tommy was studying Educational Studies when the two found themselves in the same class. Their friendship began simply. Tommy started helping Ashley by giving her rides to her student-teaching classes.
And somewhere among classes, car rides, conversations, and the ordinary routines of college life, something extraordinary was beginning.
On September 14, 2013, they went on their first date—to a Ritter football game.
They have pretty much been joined at the hip ever since.
A Love Rooted in Service
If there is one thing that characterizes Ashley and Tommy as a couple, it is their fierce devotion to one another.
They care for one another. They protect one another. They support each other and, when one needs it, the other is there with gentle encouragement to keep going.
Their love for one another has also always extended outward.
Service to others and to their community has been an important part of who they are. They volunteer. They give their time. They notice other people. Their relationship was formed not simply around the things they enjoyed together, but around a shared conviction that our lives are meant to be given in love and service to others.
They also share a love of theatre and the production arts—a little connection we especially cherish as we have come to know more about the life of Blessed Fulton J. Sheen, who understood so well the power of stage, performance, storytelling, and modern media to reach the human heart.
Ashley eventually earned her master’s degree and today serves as an assistant principal at a local Catholic school, continuing the vocation to education that first brought her to Marian. Tommy works in sales for a local business.
They have built a life together.
And for years, they have longed to share that life with a child.
The Long Road of Infertility
Their journey toward parenthood has not been an easy one.
For years, Ashley and Tommy endured infertility and pursued treatments consistent with their Catholic faith. Both underwent surgeries, along with medications and numerous other treatments and interventions.
They hoped.
They prayed.
They endured procedures and disappointments.
And they kept loving one another through all of it.
Eventually, another road toward parenthood opened before them: adoption.
Once again, they said yes.
They completed the requirements. They prepared their lives and their home. They opened their hearts to a child whose face they did not know and whose story had not yet crossed theirs.
And then came another kind of infertility:
Waiting.
They have now been waiting approximately two years for an adoption match.
There is a particular ache in preparing to receive a child and then living day after day without knowing when—or whether—the call will come.
A nursery can be prepared.
A crib can be waiting.
Two people can already have within themselves the hearts of a mother and father.
And yet their arms can remain empty.
Their Long Advent
We have begun to think of Ashley and Tommy’s waiting as a kind of Advent.
Not the four weeks we mark on a calendar, but a long Advent of the heart.
There has been preparation. Expectation. Longing. Hope.
There has also been something resembling a hidden gestation—not a child growing beneath a mother’s heart, but a love for a child growing within the hearts of both a mother and a father.
And there have been labor pains of another kind: infertility, treatments, surgeries, paperwork, preparation, waiting, possibilities, disappointments, and the vulnerability of continuing to hope.
Yet they continue to make room.
hat may be one of the most beautiful things about their story.
They have continued to make room for love.
They have made room in their marriage.
They have made room in their home.
They have made room in their plans.
And they have made room in their hearts for a child they have not yet met.
And So We Pray for a Miracle
We do not know how God will complete this story.
So we are asking boldly.
We pray, through the intercession of Blessed Fulton J. Sheen, for a miracle of conception, if it be God’s will.
And we pray just as fervently for the miracle of a match—for the expectant mother and child whose lives might one day intersect with Ashley and Tommy’s through adoption.
Most of all, we pray that God’s will be accomplished in all of their lives with tenderness, mercy, and love.
Blessed Fulton J. Sheen, intercede for them.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for them.
And their story has given birth to another desire within us:
to pray for the other families who are waiting, too.
For couples experiencing infertility.
For mothers and fathers grieving children they have lost.
For couples waiting to adopt.
For expectant mothers facing extraordinarily difficult decisions.
For children waiting for families.
For empty nurseries.
For empty arms.
For prayers whispered after everyone else has gone to sleep.
And for every husband and wife living through an Advent whose ending they cannot yet see.
This is part of the heart of The JMJ Way.
We entrust Ashley and Tommy—and every family walking this road—to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, asking the Holy Family to teach all of us the little, hidden way of love: to serve, to trust, to hope, and to remain faithful in the ordinary moments while God is writing a story we cannot yet see.
Let us pray
Blessed Fulton J. Sheen, intercede for them.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for them.
St. Joseph, pray for them.
Holy Family! Help us to be a holy family and pray for us!
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we entrust Ashley and Tommy, and the child for whom they have made room, to you.