morning by morning

Good morning.

That phrase used to be ironic for me. Mornings were never good. They were heavy, dark, impossible. A necessary evil to get to the good parts of life. To leave the warmth and comfort that night provided. To escape enchanting dreams and face reality. That’s not me. Keep me in bed, enveloped in a blanket with the blinds shut. Don’t wake me.

But something about mornings has recently grabbed me. They’re still hard. It is still a push to open my eyes, to take the first tentative steps out of bed as I test my early morning balance and tiptoe across the dark ground, trying to remember if I had left any obstacles on the floor as I head to the coffee maker (priorities). It is a (granted, small) test of bravery each morning when I wake up. Will I embrace my morning, or find myself having pressed the snooze button five times and end up simultaneously brushing my teeth, applying mascara, and sending a quick email. I hate those lazy, stressful mornings.

I’ve fallen in love with early, slow mornings. Of knowing the hope of the sunrise even if I awake long before there is any light. Of waking and the whispers to Him for strength, for patience, for love. Thanking Him for these hard, courage-requiring mornings. Of reading about His faithfulness. To sit and daydream and fall in love with soft lamp glows, with how the sun pushes its way through the cracks in the blinds, and of all the symbolism of His Light that it provides.

I’ve heard a lot of people tell me they want to fall in love. And, knowing that my advice is automatically now disqualified because I have a man (whether it’s valid or not, it’s true), I try not to bombard them with advice or too much encouragement because I know that there is a path they are on. And sometimes those words are too much. Sometimes we just must be silent. But I do tell them that I learned how to fall in love long before a man named Jon drove to Omaha. I learned to fall in love with with facial expressions, with all-nighter study sessions, with quiet drives across town, with the awkward moments of life. I fell in love with the twinkle in my music professor’s eyes when it got to his favorite part of the music. I fell in love with quiet talks with brothers, with cleaning the sink. I fell in love with late-night showers and never-ending practice room sessions. I learned to fall in love with the imperfect things, like my loud car or emotional breakdowns. Like my unknown future. I fell in love…with mornings. We are too picky about what to let ourselves fall in love with. God made life utterly romantic.

I think we all like the idea of mornings. But when mornings come we cover our face with blankets and complain that it’s too dark, that it’s still night. And I think that’s how life’s figurative mornings are, too. Oh, how we pray for the morning, and the joy we are promised with it. We beg God for the night to end, and to take its hopeless, dark confusion with it. But we forget that mornings are hard. Mornings require getting up while it may still be dark, before we are ready. We have gotten too comfortable with our darkness. We are still disillusioned by our night-ridden stupor. We think we are still caught up in the night, in bleakness. But that is when He sets off the alarm, calls us to get up. To trust Him that it’s morning even when darkness doesn’t agree with that fact. Even when our body longs to stay in bed. We would prefer to stay in our previous hopelessness. But He calls us to face the morning, even the dark, cold, early winter hours. He calls us up, calls us out. And often times we miss His sunrise—His revelation of faithfulness—because we are still in bed.

Revelations of God’s faithfulness, and experiencing the joy that comes with the morning, and the new mercies we are promised with each sunrise, sometimes require a hard morning of dying to self, getting uncomfortable, and getting out of bed before that sunrise.

I have big life decisions to make. About jobs, about what to do with my life, how I want to live it, where I want to live it, with whom I want to live it. A new day is dawning and I find myself utterly in love with this process of early mornings, of prayer for wisdom. Right now is the hard part. The sun hasn’t risen. I can’t quite see clearly. But I know it will. So I fumble through the darkness and read His words and await the sunrise of clarity, falling in love with the present darkness because it only means that a manifestation of His faithfulness, His sunrise, is nearing closer and closer with each breath of awe I breathe.

Good morning, everyone.