The Dreaded Early Mornings

Let’s just be honest, I’m not a morning person. I’m grumpy, groggy and it takes me awhile to get that brain a moving. In fact, I think my sister would attest to a time when she got her overly chipper morning self in my face to taunt me while I was pouting about having to be awake, that I slapped her. Oops, kids will be kids? So that’s why whenever I would hear someone talk about their morning God time, I cringe. Oh how bad I feel. I’ve tried many a times to get up early and do that early morning start your day with Jesus routine, it’s just never worked. I’m fighting to keep my eyes open and an hour and sometimes even 10 minutes later, I have totally forgotten everything I just read. Pray instead? Yeah, I fell asleep once trying to do that. So I finally decided to try lunch Jesus time and it was wonderful. Oh how relaxed and peaceful I was the rest of the afternoon. Then busyness overtook me. Lunch times became soccer mom and career woman time. With a child in preschool now, I spend most of my free time carting her back and forth between school and daycare. Other days, I’m attending lunch meetings for community outreach programs I volunteer for. Nights consist of family time, laundry, dinner making, cleaning, and so on. Then I started becoming pretty dedicated to my health and fitness. Which was starting to become another thing to fit into my already insane schedule. So here we are back to the early morning thing. I felt God telling me to work out in the mornings. Really? Because to make it work to exercise in the mornings to get home to help get the kids and myself ready, means 5 am? I couldn’t even do 6:00 am quiet time. I decided to try it. I have to admit, the alarm is my enemy and getting out of bed that early is not easy. I literally have everything set up and ready to go, clothes, water, head phones, gym bag, car keys, etc, so I can get every last minute of sleep I can. My alarm goes off, I throw my clothes on, grab my gym bag, water, keys and head out. But the most important part, I come home, I curl up on the couch in my silent home with a cup of coffee and read devotionals or my bible. The difference this time? The exercise not only is good for me, it wakes me up, gives me energy. It’s not a lot of time before the morning rush begins, but God makes the time stand still. My day (especially the once dreaded mornings) are smooth and peaceful. God equips me with what I need for my day.