Round and Round and Round I go….Where I stop…..

Posted on March 11, 2008 and filed under Infertility....the unfathomable journey

Round and round and round I go, where I stop, no body knows……that’s how life feels lately. Not in a bad way though, actually quite the contrary…life actually finally feels…good. Do I dare say it. I don’t know when life felt good last and I would be devasated to jinx it. Well actually that’s not true, I remember quite clearly when the last time was that I felt good.

Marrying my husband was the best decision I ever made. Our courtship was the most romantic 3 years of my life, our wedding and year prior to the wedding was full of friends, family, joy, anticipation, love and lots of emotional and physical freedom. We traveled, we played, we explored our new world together as man and wife. We were the happiest we have ever been.

We felt so free, so much like were on the runway at take off and the world was ahead of us and available to us. We were both moving up in our careers, financial stresses were minor, friends and family were priceless, and we had new little nieces and nephews being born constantly to remind us of the joy that was to come. Then in one year our whole world as we new it came crashing down on us. Yes, crashing down.
It started in January when my beloved grandmother passed away, the woman who is like a mother to me, my favorite person in the whole world. It was her time, yes she lived a long beautiful live, but does that make it any easier, no, not at all, the world is not as blessed without her in it.

Then, Michaels career came to a screeching halt. You guessed it, the mortgage industry. And he worked for the top sub-prime company in the nation, but before we could say “top sub-prime company in the nation” they closed down. During this whole time, we had also just started trying to get pregnant. Considering everyone in my family got pregnant on their first try, some with spontaneous twins, (yes I wondered how the heck that word applied with pregnancy until I learned what unspontaneous twins meant - “with medical assistance”) and when I was not pregnant after the first few months…well…..actually the first month ( I a worrier (some would say unjustified worrier) as I mentioned in my last blog, or maybe this time it was not unjustified worrying, maybe it was premonition…) I started having a black cloud grow over me, knowing deep inside me, something was not right. So ….. we went from life is so good, pinch me am I dreaming,… to…loss of my grandmother, a layoff that involved emotional and financial stress, and my lifes dream of having children being placed in a rocky area. So, we decided to move, get away from everything, start over in more quiet area, an area with more family friendly surroundings, an area where we had all new camping and hiking destinations at our disposal…Michael applied for a job and we moved to Colorado. We love it here. It is beautiful, full of fast green, blue, brown and white as far as the eye can see. Choosing which hike to take is a constant debate and our roadtrip destinations have gone from - which one do we want to do again - to which one can we wait on for a little bit longer..there are so many. People are friendly and houses are actually affordable…oh yeah and you can’t buy alcohol or a car on Sundays. We are still on the fence about whether that is a positive or a negative….
Michael got into a new industry (after working at a mortgage shop for 7 days out here in Colorado it closed down and once again we were out of a job). This was tough, watching my man go from on top of his game, providing me a life that made me feel like a princess, and feeling accomplished, connected, secure andchallenged at the end of the day, to refiguring out what his career path in life was. There were many depressed days, days wanting to kill each other (he was grumpy and home all day and I work from home, in new state where we were each others only friends, unless you count our Pug (we do), and uncertainty was at every corner), days where the story of Job had all new meaning to me, days where I grew and grew and grew so much that the stretching of my capabilities physically hurt…but little did I know, that was all preparing me for the biggest let down, the most fearful path, the most complicated news I would ever get. That “infertility” call.

So that brings us to today, where I am actually starting to feel good again. If you have read my other blogs, you know that it has all been a huge learning process and growing process and now Michael and I have been blessed to do IVF for just $1500 - $3000 (normally $17,000 to $20,000) at the best IVF clinic in the nation (God works in crazy ways, somehow in our move we ended up within 10 miles of the top IVF clinic in the nation and in some parts of the world). It’s not just that we have been blessed with this that is making me feel good again though (though we cannot start this whole process until April, so in a way my mind officially has a break from “trying” to get pregnant - this closure in my mind for just 6 weeks, brings me back to an emotional stability that I forgot the feelings for). I think it is the acceptance I finally reached on the fact that I might not ever have kids. We are definitely open to adoption, but I know if I am going to really live my life in a positive way while dealing with infertility (and I am, that is one of the few things I have been sure about in this process), I do not want to look back on these years and wonder why they heck I gave up living). So….. I have had to do some grasping of my worst case scenario and the best case scenario (kids…no kids) realizing what ever it might be in my head (bad or good), to God, whatever it ends up being is the best scenario for me, and a blessing….

Wow……….that is a big one to choke on, and one that took me a very long time, many tears, many battles with God, with friends and with myself before I could reach it (and I don’t think I am 100% there). I have actually starting realizing that there are other things I can do if children do not make it into the picture (I have always envisioned my self as a mom and a wife, other things on the side of course, but a mom and a wife - just like my beloved grandmother), so if you are the same way, you know how excruciating this can be, BUT, once I started excepting that I could not fight God on this……and win (I know from experience I can fight it all I want, but just like with the world, in the end, God wins out), once I felt completely defeated to His will (I know that defeated can seem negative, and I do know that it is a positive thing to surrender to His will, but for me, it has been more a feeling of defeat, than surrender - though as the days go by, surrender gets a little larger and defeat, gets a little smaller). I have started taking up activities that I used to do and love, I have started yoga and exercising regularly (when you find the kind of exercise that fits best with your personality, its not a chore, it is something that (for the most part) I look forward to (for me this is walking (when it is snowing I do Leslie Sansones walking video, it is amazing!!! and yoga) I have started taking advantage of the alone time I have with Michael, I am spending more time with my little love bugs again, and I have made myself really busy….round and round and round I go, where I stop nobody knows…..this keeps going through my mind like a 5 year-old on the playground twirling around and looking up at the big beautiful sky with innocence in her heart and eyes. Its been a long time since I felt that.


I am busy, very busy. But I am learning to relax in my busyness, I am learning to enjoy and embrace my busyness. Would I rather be relaxing, dreaming about my future with no idea of the cross I was about to bear ahead of me, of course. Would I rather be looking at my husband as he walks through the doors with the tired eyes of a full-time mom and wife passing my child off to tired, but open arms, yes. Would I rather be planning next weeks lunches, laundry schedule and playtime ideas, yes, would I rather be exhausted from pregnancy and puking my brains out but envision the future that is about to embrace my life, oh…yes….but I am not.

Instead I am filling my life with joy, maybe not the joy that I used to have, maybe not the joy that I have gotten used to thinking is the only joy that will fill my heart and make it complete, but a joy, and joy that takes me to a playground, spinning around and around and around, “round and round and round I go, where I stop..no body knows” Except now I have the wisdom that God knows, and God is going to stop my spinning at some point, and he is going to put a baby in my arms - my own, an adopted one, or a spiritual one, and I won’t have to keep spinning and filling my self with joy….the joy will be mine, it will come from places I cannot imagine right now, because God dreams bigger than we do…and right now, I have dreams that are taking their time to come true…I can only imagine that that is because they are bigger, than I will ever be able to grasp…Round and round and round I go, where I stop….only God knows. ( For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord , “plans to prosper you and not
to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11).