5 More Minutes With Jesus

I have never been a morning person. At least up through college, life let me (mostly) get away with that, though sleeping through (while simultaneously attending) some of my early morning classes was probably not the wisest investment of learning energy!

Once I began working full-time, and then later as a graduate student, and finally as a mother, I made compromises with my natural rhythms in order to do what I needed to do and serve whom I needed to serve. In other words, I became more physically, mentally, and emotionally capable of handling mornings and even learned to enjoy some early morning stillness.

But mornings have never been a natural fit, and I still often battle my alarm clock.

It's quite silly how I battle that alarm. It doesn't seem to matter when I set it for or what the "snooze" setting is, I just really struggle to get up the first time the alarm rings (and sometimes, especially lately, the fourth or fifth time). I seriously feel as though I'm pushing through an element like water, trying to swim to consciousness. I am often vaguely aware that I am half-way between sleeping and waking, but the sleeping part pulls me down like a mischievous elf trying to keep me from starting the day.

With the light suddenly changing as we make the turn from winter towards spring (oh yes!) mornings are getting a bit easier. Because I'm working a lot of late nights, I'm still struggling to get up the first time the alarm rings, but I'm managing to push through to at least a state of semi-wakefulness a little earlier, mostly because the light beckons.

But I still don't always want to get up right away. And lately, I'm letting that be okay. Instead of dragging myself up out of bed with a heavy sigh and a little groan (I've done that many mornings, believe me) I am letting myself settle back under the covers for a few minutes. Even when I know it's time to get up. Even if I still haven't turned the alarm off.

I used to think the words "5 more minutes" when I did this. (I used to say those words to my mother a lot when she tried to get me up when I was younger too.) These days I find myself adding two little words to that, and it's changing the way I'm thinking of those final precious minutes of rest. The words that play through my head on the mornings I allow myself to say put a little longer have become "5 More Minutes With Jesus."

I've often found that my prayers somehow feel deeper when my mind is still in that fuzzy, liminal place between total sleep and total wakefulness. That may seem strange, but it's just the way I seem to be wired. Maybe my rational mind hasn't had a chance to take hold quite yet. Maybe my heart is somehow closer to the surface. I know I often have people come to mind in the early morning, people I'm called to pray for. And I often have a deeper sense of nearness to God and his heart in those moments too, an awareness of his presence that has sustained me and upheld me during the night.

So these days I am spending five more minutes with Jesus. I am partly conscious of asking him, somewhere down deep, if I can come extra close to him and let him hold me for those few moments. He always says yes. Some days I spend that time moving into more wakeful prayers. Some days I fall back asleep until the alarm goes off, but it's a precious last few minutes of sleep, a kind of basking in his presence. And I always feel more ready to finally turn that alarm off, not in heavy-handed or startled way, but in a deliberate okay-I-think-I-am-finally-ready-to-face-this-brand-new-day-as-gift way.

Maybe he is making me into a morning person at last.

More Evenings Like This

This is the sight that greeted us last Friday evening, right at the start of our long weekend in Erie. Our mini-vacation felt like it passed all too quickly, but I'm so grateful we had it -- it was most needed.

We didn't feel ready to leave the slow and steady rhythms of wind and waves. I think we would have all relished many more days of rest and beauty.

Exhausting Week

Well, we've officially started what I've termed our "exhausting week." This is the week of the summer that, if we can just get through, I will begin to feel that I can breathe again!

Several weeks ago, when we made the decision (for our family's health and well-being) that I would step down from my job at the church office, we thought it made sense for my last day to be this coming Friday, the 10th. It did make sense...then. The one big thing we weren't thinking of, however, was that it would mean my last week at the church would run concurrently with our church's VBS program. D., as the Christian Education director, is ultimately in charge of that program and also heavily involved in the hands-on carrying out of components: the dramatic skits at the beginning (it seems that most men really harbor not so secret desires to dress up like pirates) and the Bible reflection times with the various age groups throughout the morning. The sweet girl is attending the VBS, so this is really a family affair, and we're having to leave the house early each morning to get us all where we need to go at church in plenty of time.

I've tried to help "behind the scenes" with the VBS, especially helping to prepare some of the Bible reflections on the theme of treasure. I had hoped I might be able to help with actual teaching, by my time at the office is pretty tied up. Since we haven't yet been able to hire my successor, I'm trying to wrap up all sorts of odds and ends with the administrator job: revise my job description; file mountains of papers (filing has always gotten short shrift because I'm always skimming off the top of urgent things in my twenty hours per week); make tasks lists of the basic things that need to be done each week; find and train volunteers willing to do them, etc. I spent about six hours at the office today instead of the usual four, and I'm beat.

It's all good, but all tiring...and this week too shall pass, to paraphrase one of my wise Mama's favorite sayings. (She loved "this too shall pass" and "may this be the worst day of your life" whenever I complained...which of course I did a lot during adolescence!). I'm not really complaining here, just taking a deep breath. I know we are moving toward more spaciousness and room in our schedules, and I am so looking forward to that. For now, I just need to rely on God's grace to get through a week of way too much to do and way too little time to sleep.

Sabbath Musings

On Saturday I had the wonderful opportunity to hear Lauren Winner speak at the seminary. Lauren Winner, for those of you who might not be familiar with her work, is the author of several excellent books including Girl Meets God (her spiritual autobiography) and Mudhouse Sabbath. That second is a slim volume of reflections on various spiritual practices/disciplines (including Sabbath-keeping) and how Winner's roots in Judaism enhance and enrich her understanding of how to embody and live these practices.

The all-day seminar (thank you, Dana! what a wonderful gift!) explored the topic of Sabbath: a Biblical understanding of what Sabbath is (and isn't). We read, drew, prayed and discussed for several hours, wrestling with what Sabbath keeping could creatively look like for Christians in our culture today.

There was so much food for thought packed into those hours. I know this is a topic my exhausted and stressed out little self needs desperately to come back to. It's not just a matter of balancing work and rest (though that's important) but learning how to live in/dwell in God's rest, the rest into which He invites us. I want to think and pray more about this.

So from time to time, you may see what I'll call "Sabbath Musings" pop up here in my blog.

One of the first things we talked about, and an insight I'm still pondering, is how in our culture we have tried to commodify time. Have you ever considered how much of our language concerning time is taken directly from the worlds of business, finance, economics? We SPEND time. We MANAGE time. We INVEST time. We KILL time. We WASTE time.

Lauren suggested that perhaps a better, healthier (more truthful?) way to think about time is to discuss how we INHABIT it, DWELL in it, LIVE in it, and ORDER it. That last becomes especially important in a culture in which our sense of time is broken and disordered.

Again, much food for thought. I'm sure I will be reading through my notes and jotting more thoughts here in the coming weeks.