Spinning Plates

It was 6:24 a.m. on Saturday, June 6th, and I was wide awake. To let my husband and dogs sleep in, I tip-toed out of the room and into the living room. Immediately, I started crying. Within seconds, I found myself on my knees next to the recliner. I cried out to God in despair and grief for about thirty minutes.

The day before we had received the call that our embryo transfer did not work. We have tried everything to have a child except IVF which is too costly for us. Trying with donated embryos was our last hope. It failed.

I spent Saturday cleaning my house and organizing drawers, cabinets, and closets. I needed to feel that my house was in order before getting my emotions in order. At the end of the day, I flipped through Netflix and found the documentary Spinning Plates. "Oh, another chef movie!" I thought.

After an hour in to Spinning Plates, it was clear this was not another chef movie. The documentary follows three families with three extremely different restaurants. All families have faced adversity while pursuing their dreams aka "spinning plates." One of the families' stories spoke to me in a way that only God could.

The Breitbach family owns and operates Breitbach's Country Dining, which has existed for 150 years in Balltown, Iowa. The restaurant is the community's gathering place, meeting house, and oldest institution. Mike and Cindy Breitbach run the restaurant today.

In 2007, the restaurant burned down due to a gas explosion. The original structure was completely gone. The community rallied around the Breitbachs. They sent money for rebuilding, donated construction items, and helped rebuild the restaurant. Within six months, it was up and running again. Mike felt such a sense of gratitude to the community for all their help.

Ten months to the day of the first fire, Mike received a call in the middle of the night that his restaurant was on fire. It burned down again. After an investigation, no cause of the fire was ever found. Mike was done and vowed not to rebuild again.

Something (or someone) told him to try again. He said," We couldn't let them down. All those people who invested their time and money in us. We have to rebuild a 2nd time." They did and during the rebuilding, his daughter met who would become her husband. "It was a good thing that came out of an awful thing." said Mike.

Chris and I were told in September that we'd have six months to try to have a baby. Our friends and family rallied behind us and donated towards our four rounds of IUI. Those didn't work. After some encouragement from those who love us, we decided to "rebuild" and try something different, embryo adoption. Again, our families and friends rallied behind us, gave us money, encouraged us, loved on us, and more. For the second time, it failed. We don't know why it failed and most likely won't ever know.

We are at the point in this journey where we have no more funds to move forward. We may be totally finished with our fertility journey unless God provides financially. We have one embryo left at the fertility center which may have to stay there and wait. Additionally, we are worn. My body looks like it has been through a fight. I have sticky residue that won't come off my belly from the 33 Estrogen patches I had to take on and off this month. My rear end has 31 welts and bruises from the 31 shots I had to endure. The physical part of this is torture. The emotional part of it all is 10 times worse.

We want to thank all of you for rallying behind us in this journey. Even though it may be at an end, we still need you. We are coping with a loss that is indescribable. How does one describe the loss of something that never was? We need your prayers, broad shoulders, and encouragement as we deal with this grief. Will we rebuild again? I don't know at this point. I do know that God has an amazing plan for us. We will find out what that is one day, but until then, we'll be here "spinning plates."