Sleepy Mornings

Some personal reflections

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Since my wife is a teacher, she had a full week off for Thanksgiving break, and I was thankful to be off for three of those days (Wed-Fri). That meant we turned the 5:40 a.m. alarm clock off and slept until the kids woke us up — which usually is roughly an hour later if not sooner.

But that provides us the ability to stay up later — which we did, mostly because that was our time to spend time with each other and watch the latest Stranger Things episodes. As Sunday came and Monday was around the corner, we were both not looking forward to how sleepy we were going to be the next morning. And let me tell you something: we were sleepy, indeed.

But not as sleepy as our children. Example A below.

This is Piper. She likes to get in our bed before the crack of dawn and usually falls back asleep. This particular morning she stayed in her bed but then woke up around 6 a.m. as Shale and I were trying to wake up with coffee on the couch. As you can see, she wanted no part of it. She went back to sleep. (Then stay in your bed, kid!)

Jovi, our oldest who gets up at 6:15 a.m. like clockwork, slept in until around 6:45 a.m. We knew she was tired, but were still surprised. We all had sleepy mornings. And there was something ordinarily beautiful about that. It made me count my blessings and thank God for his grace. It was precious seeing both of our children so sleepy and simply not wanting to get out of bed and get ready for the day.

Shale and I experienced a relatively quiet morning that day. It was nice. Recently both kids had sleepovers with their grandparents, so Shale and I had the night and next morning to ourselves. Having a quiet morning was great, and we were thankful for it. And we look forward, in one sense, to when we will have quiet mornings each day — but we are thankful for our not-so-quiet mornings right now. We’re thankful for our sometimes-chaotic mornings, wrestling two children to get ready for the day. We’re thankful for our mornings that are basically nonstop from 6-7:20 a.m. We’re thankful for God’s provision each day.

There’s not much of a “lesson” to this post other than this: be thankful for what season of life God has you in. There will be frustrations, confusion, and sometimes discontentment. Don’t let that stay. Be okay with where God has you. He’s sovereign; we are not. Be thankful for the chaotic mornings, the mornings where everything goes wrong—and also be thankful for the sleepy mornings. I know I am.

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We recently took family photos, so I thought I’d share one with you all!

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