Mornings

So I thought I would at least talk about why I'm doing this. I have wanted to write a book for many years. I have many great ideas in my head but that's where the inspiration seems to stop. I get a page or two down and then it just sits there collecting dust in the filing cabinet of my computer. So that's why I thought this would be a good medium - it's about ideas. It's short. It's meant to be a first draft without a lot of extra editing or polishing. My kind of writing.

As I mentioned I get a rush from helping and inspiring others. Maybe I like this because it is safe too. I can say anything I want to you as a reader and there is a distance between us. So I can be more blunt and open than I might be face to face. Call it a cop-out, if you will but I feel many times I am talking to myself just as much as I might be talking to anyone else.

So I talked about the Angel Train. For me, my angel train leaves the station at 10PM. That just means I need to be in bed by 10 if I am to be at my best the next day. I get up early every morning (with the exception of a few days this week as I was a bit ill & thought the extra rest would be more self-care than getting up). I get up at 6:20 - about 50 minutes before anyone else is making demands on me or needing me. The house is quiet and calm. I get to drink a cup of coffee all the way to the bottom while it is still hot and I get to spend a few minutes just for me.

Now I have to say, this morning thing is new to me. I have never considered myself a morning person and I had heard this idea many times but was never able to do it (certainly not if it was to exercise!). Finally something clicked and I got up one morning and that did it. It was such a peaceful way to enter the day that it was worth getting up early for. Now it is a habit. If I don't get up, I feel like I've missed something. So what do I do in that time? I read both my bible and an inspirational/developmental book of some kind and I also pray, meditate, visualize, journal...whatever I feel I need to start that particular day.

When it's time to wake up the kids, I go in and cuddle them and wake them up with kisses - a much nicer alternative to "KIDS! Get up! We slept in!! Hurry up or you'll miss the bus!" Now I am not saying that every morning is rosey and problem free (or that we never miss the bus!) but I am saying that in looking after myself at the start, I have the clarity to get through the day feeling much more balanced.

There it is! Balance. I set it as a goal at the beginning of the year. I have been striving for it this year and seem to be getting closer. In her book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, Joanna Weaver says this "Here's something else I've discovered about balance. Being balanced is not so much a matter of staying in perfect equilibrium as it is a matter of finding the right rhythm for our lives." She refers to a time when her and her sister would try to find that "sweet spot" on the teeter totter that would keep it balanced perfectly in the middle and how even when they found it, it didn't last very long. It's about the ups and downs and accepting that sometimes, one arena of our life will have dominance and sometimes, the pendulum will swing. But it always crosses the middle and sometimes it stops a while there.

So where is your sweet spot? It is the season of Advent - a time to pause and reflect and prepare. Unfortunately, the "prepare" part seems to take over and become a harried frenzy of rushing around, getting swallowed into the commercial abyss...It has become a time of self absorption instead of self-reflection.

Ready my heart for the birth of Emmanuel.
Ready my soul for the Prince of Peace.
Heap the straw of my life for His body to lie on
Light the candle of peace; let the child come in
(from Steve Bell's Ready My Heart)