me 'n' God 'n' early morning

There’s something about early, early morning that I like. I think it’s the peace of being awake before the world wakes up. I like to sit here quiet with very soft music playing. It’s a time to think about things—not worrisome things or plans or what the day holds, but just to think about the Lord, about how much I love my kids, about happy things that have happened to me.

I used to wonder about Pappy, who would be up in the early morning reading his Bible or just looking out at the day. And now I understand. It is a good time of day.

I’ve never before been able to enjoy this time of day. When I worked at day care, I often woke up in the middle of the night--about this time really 3:30, 4:00. But then it was the stress and pressure of the job that made sleeping short. I had a lot of things to worry about and plan and thing through. It was never this peaceful, quiet kind of wakefulness. I was always trying to go back to sleep.

Then after the day care finally got moved, wakefulness was a habit and when I woke up it was a bother, because I knew I would be tired in the morning and I wanted to go back to sleep. But now it is a joy.

We’ve been talking about having my knees fixed and the possibility of surgery. And that’s good. But I wonder if having my knees repaired will alter the tempo of my days. I don’t want to lose this time alone with me and God and my thoughts. When the Lord healed Rachael of lymphoma, I told Him I wouldn’t bug Him about healing my knees and that promise has paid of in great spiritual dividends. Not being able to walk has left me chair bound and I spend hours some days, reading the bible and following different topics along as the Spirit leads. That’s a very good thing and I don’t want to lose it. I’m afraid if I were able to bop around and do this and that without thinking about the number of steps or the pain involved that I might get so busy with life that I would lose this quiet flow of walking quietly with the Lord.

There’s a peace in this kind of walk. I’ve always loved the Lord and I’ve lived for Him for most of my life—not just drifted along ‘being good’ but consciously made choices to do and be what He would have me to be. And that has been a blessing. But I’ve never been able to just be quietly in the center of His will with no need to get up and going. I know I was pursuing legitimate tasks and I was doing them within His Will. Up until now though, I’ve always had something that needed doing. I’ve always had my times of contemplation cut short by necessities. Now, now I can wake up at 3:30 and sit quietly in the peace with no driving need to go back to sleep so I can wake up in three or four hours and do something important. These hours alone in the dark become my important thing to do.

I used to like sitting in Notah’s old house and looking down across the valley and watching the lights come on, then the color shift from darkness to the lighter and lighter grays of the coming day. “My” window in the Angelo house faced west. So the view was different from watching the sun come up. It was like a window on how that rising sun affected the world. Maybe it wasn’t the blazing beauty of a desert sunrise but it was beautiful and gave me a backwards view of the coming morning.

Then when they moved to Tierra Grande I had a direct view of the Manzanos and the gradual lightening of the sky, the rising sun casting the mountain into relief as the first blush of light shone above it. Sometimes when there were no clouds the brightness seeped up across the entire sky. Other times when there were blowing particles in the air there would be fingers of light blazing up from behind the mountain. And other times, the clouds would put on a spectacular display of reflected and refracted and changing colors as the sun rose from its resting place of the night.

Here in Westerville, I don’t have the pyrotechnics of the sunrise, I have the wall of the neighbor lady’s house. But I still have the peace of morning and the sleeping neighborhood around me. This time of morning it is just me and God. And THAT is a very good thing.