Mornings 'Round Here

"His mercies are new every morning..."


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Often, I awake during the night to check the alarm clock. "Is it time to get up yet?" I ask myself in anticipation.

And sometimes it's only 4:30 but I'll arise anyway. In the darkness, I slip into my slipper-shoes and then silently lift my robe from the hook behind the door.

I step into the lamp light of the kitchen and think, "It's morning!" And into my head pops all that that means:

Making and drinking my hot chocolate while I watch the dear people on our local news, the ones who make me laugh in between the bad and good news. Sitting with Lennon on my blanket-layered lap, scratching his ears and drinking my chocolate and then leaning back in the recliner.

Then I'll check my email, my blog and my Facebook for comments and concerns from others and I'll click upon my blogroll for your new thoughts (and be inspired). Maybe the news will still be playing or maybe by now I've got headphones over my head while listening to Joyce Meyer and learning from her on stage, even after 16 years. 

Usually I'm munching a bowl of Mom's Best cereal in all the anointing.

Darkness still reigns outside, but I grab my coat from our living room closet and tiptoe past the bedroom, through the kitchen then out to the back porch and down the driveway (breathing deeply of country air) and to the mailbox where Tom's newspaper waits. Then back to the house, the tiptoeing, the putting away of my coat and the paper.

Maybe I'll write here, in my blog. By now, Time is growing short so I hurry through my words (sorry). But the inspiration usually does arrive right before the cats must be fed, which I do quietly, and then straighten some rooms in more silence and prepare Tom's before-breakfast snack, always the same; two prunes, five almonds and 1/2 cup orange juice. Good for him and he likes it, year following year.

By now Time is pouring from between my fingers and I stand at the bay windows in morning light to see if all is right with my side yard world and squeeze some grateful thoughts from my brain. Lennon sits upon my table in the windows and we both watch the early birds. "Hurry and enjoy this," I think to myself.

And then it's time to awaken Tom.

Yet, even then, my mind skips ahead to when I'll have Second Breakfast (remember that from Lord of the Rings?), which is just coffee and toast at 10:30, but so much more. That will be my coffee break, after having made Tom's oatmeal and zipping through some housework, but it's my time there in the windows. Or rather, His and mine, our time for books and scribbling notes and staring at the trees and yard and the late birds.

Morning after new morning after new morning.

No wonder I so often check that alarm clock in the night.




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Though I should be honest and add that, on the occasions when my routine gets messed with (as in, when Tom gets up way too early), I've been known to become quite the cranky little lady.

Yes, me. :)

And on yard sale mornings, Second Breakfast gets moved to afternoon. But I'm ok with that.


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"My voice will come to you in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I send my prayer to you, and keep watch." ... Psalm 5:3


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