crying over dirty dishes...

It may not have been too terribly long since my last post, but it feel like it could have possibly been over a year with all the changes. I don't know where to start, actually...
So I'm just going to dive in. Walter and I are not doing the IUI in December. We don't have the money, for the most part. Secondly, I had been avoiding the little pangs in my heart and the whispers in my ear from God, because I felt like he was leading us in another direction. I couldn't avoid them all, and at night I laid awake, afraid to even admit a huge part of my uneasy feelings to even my husband. A heartbreaking moment really hit when I came across a line God had put in my path: 'If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.' ~Russian Proverb. I was doing just that. Chasing two rabbits and stressing my husband and myself out trying to keep up with it all. He felt like his job wasn't bringing enough money for it all, and I could see him being hard on himself. When he started offering to get a second (or third!) job to pay for the many rabbits we were chasing, I couldn't avoid my feelings anymore.
I truly feel like God is wanting us to drop the procedures to conceive and focus, really FOCUS, on becoming foster parents. It breaks my heart. It really does. I know God is going to lead us on the right path, and that God will change my heart to be His heart more and more... but there is a part of me that feels defeated. Like I'm giving up on my children before they've even had a chance to be born. I feel so much grief, almost as if I've already conceived and the child has passed away. I know this will not be forever, and that Walter and I will someday try again... but... my heart still breaks today.
Sometimes I feel crazy. Humans adapt to their surroundings and their feelings and their lies so quickly... sometimes I wonder what I look like to people outside of my close family and friends. Here I am, a woman who has been trying for a "short" time (compared to those women who have been TTC for 7-10+ years...) and I'm grieving over children I haven't even had yet! I know it may appear to be completely nuts, but to me it feels as real as anything ever has been. This is the greatest heartbreak of my life. I wanted to be a mother before I had the desire to be a wife, and here I am, not able to present my husband with a child to call our own. What a useless woman I would have been in any other time period but now! ... and still, I feel useless.
Digging deep below all this pain I CAN feel a small seed of hope. When speaking to a friend about trying to conceive, she had told me she was glad she never conceived because she later adopted and was glad to have the son she has now. While her son is one of the cutest I've ever met (!), I was confused. What about all the pain, all those years she spent TTC... Now I'm thinking I may understand. Is there a foster child out there that so desperately needs a family to love them, that God's plan is for us to foster to meet him/her? Is MY child already in this world, waiting for me? While I'm praying for this seed of hope to grow, I am still trying to dig out all of the pain covering it like thick wet blankets.
Our new plan is to get the house really together. Start preparing the children's rooms, making room for toy boxes and little outfits, starting to gather items for the children... This is what I'm doing today. (By the way, please let me know if you have toys/books/clothes/luggage in good shape that you are willing to donate to the foster children soon to be in our home!) And while I am partly excited for this season, I also know that today I am closing the book of TTC. Becoming a foster parent is getting our full focus for now. While of course my husband and I will have sex (!), our calendar will no longer have 4-5 days with a large red heart in which we MUST. While I know we'll pull this book down from the shelf in the future, and be on this path again... it is painful to not get what we want when we want it, isn't it? God will provide. I KNOW this.
Today I am scrubbing the corners of the house, and sighing with defeat. I am steam mopping the floor, and dreaming of difference we can make. I am dusting the furniture, and trying not to beat myself up. I am doing the dishes, and sobbing uncontrollably. I am moving furniture, and trying not to be angry with God for asking me to wait. I am washing the towels, and thanking God for my supportive husband...