Two minutes after the stroke of midnight on New Years I broke down.

Time didn’t wait for my goals to be accomplished.

I had lists of them that were supposed to be complete come January 1, 2014.

The failure weighed too heavy and sapped every bit of joy that could have been had bringing in the new year celebrating, while on vacation with family and friends. Instead, hunkered down in my room, I ushered in the new year — weeping.

The failure to accomplish the things I had wanted to drove my mind all the way back to the fresh-out-of-teens, newly-married, college-going version of myself.

Through my ugly cry, I lamented to my husband, “I didn’t even finish college.”

Three semesters out from a Bachelors in Elementary Education, pregnant with my second child, sick and tired in Spanish class, I decided I couldn’t do this.

I can’t finish college and be a good wife and a good mama.

And Jesus asked me to give up my dreams, which at that time included living on dirt floors in a foreign land, feeding hungry children, beholding ebony faces and bright white eyes — I could almost touch.

“You can’t pursue your dream and your husband pursue his without compromising your family and marriage. Unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit. And so it is with your dreams.”

God was asking me to surrender. That year I became a stay at home mama is another story entirely. I touched on it briefly, here and here. It was a year of my identity crisis. It was the year I began learning what it meant to live a life surrendered.

And all the years following flashed before my eyes this New Year’s turning.

In the darkness, I cried to my husband showing him on my computer screen what I had hoped to finish by New Year. It was my newsletter–what I wanted to offer in it free to my subscribers.

This wasn’t even the original plan. In the middle of the previous year I decided I wanted to write an e-book that I could give away. It would be about growth, how God is in interested in our personal growth. I would tell my story throughout it, while teaching you what I learned.

I told my mentor about it. This was my goal. I checked-in with her until I was ashamed to, because I hadn’t even started it, yet. There was no way I could finish in time.

So, instead, I thought of the idea to use the words of affirmation that I have had posted on the blog for some time now, create beautiful printables to display, and give them away so families can learn who they are in Christ, right along with mine.

And weeping I told my husband, “I’ve failed. I couldn’t even do this small thing. I didn’t write the book. I didn’t finish the printables. I can’t do anything well. Why do I bother trying?!?”

At that moment I was in anguish and in pain and couldn’t understand the lack of fruitfulness in what I put my hand to do–if God had really called me…

Conintue | Part 2: A Wife and Mama’s Surrender…