Jessica's Blog

Our family is one that likes to be up bright and early in the morning... with the occasional bout of just not being able to get up. Anyone who knows us, knows that we are in bed at or by 10 o'clock. For our night owl friends, it just doesn't click. The phone rang the other night at 9:30, a sound that could have woken the dead... I was walking upstairs with my herb pillows to heat up, and to re-heat my tea. After checking to see how much tea I had spilt and observing that Evie was now awake and crying, I answered the phone, it was a friend from Utah. He wanted to know if he could talk to Mike. I plied him with a rhetorical question, "Do you know what time it is?"... sure, it's 9:30. Mmhm, just thought I'd ask.

Recently, busyness, tiredness, and struggling with going to sleep had gotten me out of the habit of getting up early at all, and therefore I wasn't getting up until six or six-thirty. For a lot of people, that is very early. For me, it isn't nearly early enough! Getting up at six or later usually means I have just enough time to grab my clothes and get in the shower with children running out of bed right behind me. It also means no quiet time... no time to read, pray, and write.

So the other morning, I simply decided I was going to start getting out of bed, no matter how tired I felt, enough was enough. My alarm went off at 4:30, before I could be tempted to hit the snooze button, I got up and walked upstairs to the kitchen. It was raining, how I love to just sit and listen to the rain! I stood staring out the window in the dark for a full 10 minutes... without moving once, not even to turn my head. I had time to just think without anyone saying a thing, no one wanted to ask me something, no one needed something, I didn't have a quick look out the window before having to tear off somewhere, I just stood there. I couldn't have done that if I had gotten up at six... I had time to make a pot of coffee and have quiet time for an hour before I had to even look at another human being! I have time to write in my journal, read my bible and any other books that I am using.

I have been loving it so much this week! It makes such a difference in my day, and I'm ready and downstairs early enough to make muffins for breakfast, without it running into lunch. I read on someones blog last week about how she never makes anything for breakfast, though she has lovely, nostalgic ideas of sitting down with a cup of coffee and a fresh muffin and jam. No, she confessed that she sleeps through dawn and rises early enough to have a burger at one. How depressing. If only she knew how wonderful it is to get up to see dawn...