Mornings

I am a morning person. Yes I am one of “those”. My eyes always open before any alarm clock and I am instantly alert and ready to hit the floor running. My mood is light and I will get to chattering a mile a minute. There is only one other member of this family who is a morning person and that is my youngest Kelsey. Good thing for her too since she has to get up at 4:30 to get ready for work five days a week. The rest of the family? Well they tend to look at the two of us with unrestrained loathing between the hours of 4:30 and say 10:00am. At about 10:00 is when you can expect more than a grunt and a scowl for any of their responses.

When Bob and I first married it took me awhile to fully understand his sour mood in the morning. As a self absorbed person I used to think I had done something wrong. Ends up it wasn’t anything I had done at all but rather was entirely the alarm clocks doing. We each have our own nightstand clock. Mine is one of those old fashioned wind up clocks. I love going to sleep with the tick-tock rhythm it makes. I have yet to hear the alarm since I always wake before it. Bob has one of those high tech electric clocks with all kinds of gadgetry and gizmos attached to it. You have to have a masters degree to figure out how to run the darn thing. The one function I find annoying, but seems to be Bob’s favorite, is the snooze alarm function. I have never understood why a person sets the alarm for a certain time only to end up hitting the alarm 3-4 times before finally surrendering to it and prying themselves out of bed. Why not set the alarm later and get up the first time the alarm goes off? Wouldn’t the sleep be better?

While Bob is slapping around his clock and then plodding along trying to catch his shower and get set for his day I can be found in the kitchen making coffee and sitting in the recliner with my devotionals and bible doing my morning study. I can usually be done by the time he shows himself and heads for the coffee maker. Once he sits is when I start in with my morning chatter. Remember, he never speaks during this entire time so I can get some quality, not to mention quantity, talk time in. I think we were married for about a year and a half before I finally had the revelation that the human body, men in particular, can sleep with their eyes open. I could never understand why it was that after I KNEW I had told him something that morning he swore up and down later I never said any such thing. I was growing concerned about his memory issues and wanted to schedule an MRI to check for possible tumors. Ends up it wasn’t anything remotely that dramatic but rather was a simple case of him sitting opposite me with a glazed look in his eyes which was actually him just sleeping with his eyes open. So now I know if there is something seriously important he needs to know about……..send him an email.

I do not remember the last time I wasn’t present for a sunrise. I adore sunrises. Some days you are rewarded with the most magnificent, colorful display across the heavens that can only be painted from God’s own palette and other days, like our snowy morning today, the softness of the day gently approaches embracing you in comfort much as God does for us every day. To me sunrises are not just about the visual but it is about newness. Each and every day is new. It is clean and full of promise. It is at those times, before the rest of the world has jumped into the hurried pace of their day…that I can sit there in this quiet time and hear God. So often we are talking with God but rare is it when we remember to slow down enough to listen…to those soft whispers in the heart. This is where joy is planted. This is where, when we surrender to it and His will, contentment is found. Yep, I LOVE mornings.

(The picture is of one of the more colorful mornings I’ve experienced off of my deck.)