Upon some deeper soul searching to try and understand my funk and move out of it so that life can begin again I found the unwelcome culprit in my heart.

Fear.

Fear is the reason I don’t have any desire this year to write a list of dreams and ideals and hopes.

Despite the fact I’ve watched the God I love work miracles around me and know His goodness, I am still afraid.

As much as my head wants to be perfectly optimistic and delightfully ready to have a new beginning and a clean slate of a year before me, my heart wonders why.

Why set yourself up for failure when you know you won’t ____________________?  (Exercise…read every day…control your frustrations better…have more structure…make time for dates with Christopher…)

Why not just be realistic and hope for the best?

Why make a list of things to stare you in the face and let you know you haven’t made the mark?

Fear tells me don’t do it.

As a perfectionistic oldest child, if I can’t get it all right, sometimes I don’t want to try.

Last night as I read through old journals like I always do when my heart isn’t in quite the right place, I found where I’d written one of my favorite verses:

Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy comes from God! 1 Cor 3:5

Big sigh.  Thankfully, it isn’t up to me.  It isn’t up to my independent, stubborn, strong self to muster up what I need to make a good effort at making the grade.

I can’t make it.  I won’t make it.  Only when I lay my life down and let God direct and shape it does it turn into something beautiful.  And that’s what I want.

This morning I read the words on a very favorite blog, written by Ann Voscamp.  Her words here are much more poetic than mine and were just the encouragement I needed to wake up to as she wrote about the things I had been pondering into the night.  This part especially seemed whispered just to me-it is exactly how I feel:

What if all tomorrows are just more of all our yesterdays?

A thousand times I’ve told myself, “I simply must try harder.” Try harder to be more organized, try harder to educate our children better, try harder to be more after God’s heart.

But I know it: trying harder only  results in harder trials.

So I’m off today, with pen in hand and a little bit softer heart that wants to listen and to dream and to hope for great things in 2010.  Still afraid but certain that my fear won’t get me anywhere and even more certain that God wants me to trust him and seek him in new ways.