[Stretch, yawn, grunt] I did it.
It wasn't as hard as I'd thought it would be. Of course when you're trying to get to sleep early, you never can -- all sorts of weird noises were happening last night -- dogs barking, Simon knocking things around in the kitchen, the neighbors coming and going, water dripping from the crappy gutter onto the roof outside my window, something scrabbling in the wall next to my bed -- so I finally put in earplugs, and when the alarm went off I was having an unpleasant dream, so it was actually a relief to open my eyes, although I felt my body going unnnnnghh, you want me to do WHAT?
But here I sit, it's nearly seven, I've been moving around for nearly two hours, and it's been marvelous. I had time to sit down and read my Bible and pray (I'm in Luke right now, one of my favorite Gospels, and I love Jesus' heart for women), put away last night's air-dried dishes, write a letter to my sister, make a grocery list, and savor my coffee.
Now I'm going to go play with picture frames. I have to drill holes in a couple of them.
5 comments:
I'm very impressed with your Lenten discipline. I hope and pray that you can keep them up. I have decided to forgo sweets and it's been one day and I'm like "why am I doing this?"
I've been contemplating getting up earlier. I have so much to do and am so overwhelmed with grad school and everything else that I think getting up early is my only option for having any quiet time. I'm so bad at it though. You are inspiring to me! What time do you go to bed?
Hahahaha (she groans exhaustedly), nine o'clock. Yup. Nine. I'm like an eleven-year-old again.
It's the end of the work day and I'm so exhausted I'm shaking. But this will make it easy for me to go to bed VERY early.
:)
Good luck!! I think it's totally worth it. My days are nutso, and since yours are too, I can recommend the loveliness and peace of the early morning quiet. It's restorative, and I feel much more centered for relaxing in it.
I admire you. Not just because you gave up something for Lent, but because what you are doing is something that I know I could never accomplish. I love the idea of 5 am, but not the reality of it.
I don't know if you've ever read anything by Douglas Adams, but he's one of my favorite authors. He repeatedly wrote about, and once published a novel under the title, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul. The idea, as best as I can summarize it, is about that period of time that is the most dreadful for a particular person. Originally, it referred to a person who, through a mistake in an science experiment, had gained immortality. It turned out that immortality was very difficult to to accept for this individual. He would have been fine, except for the period from about 2:00 to 4:00 pm on a Sunday afternoon. For him, it was The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul. It was the period of time in which he questioned his very existence, doubted its value, and longed to get on with things, but time moved painfully slowly.
My own personal Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul is 5:00 to 7:00 am. It's the time when doubts seem to double in strength, confidences wither away in the darkness, and I pray that the time passes as quickly as possible. It never does. I try to sleep though it as often as I can, but I fail too frequently for my tastes.
That you have chosen this very period to better yourself, the period of time in a given day that I avoid at all costs... well, I see it as an achievement. Perhaps your LDTTotS is at another time. Perhaps not. Either way, I find your efforts inspirational. Will I emulate them? Unlikely. But will I try to draw strength from your example? Yes, I think so.
My LDTTotS falls where the immortal man's does. I hate two to four in the afternoon. It's the time when all my work, my achievements, my inspirations, my ambitions, my dreams, my purposes and my future seem pointless, and when the minute hand on the clock never seems to move.
I'm not fond of three a.m. either.
But mornings I love -- so this is more a revival (haha, religious punning unintended) or a resurrection (haha again) of something in me that I have allowed, in the years since going to college and learning bad hours, to shrivel. The best time of the day for me has always been sunrise. I never forget, when I see the sun come up, that God has created a new day, that His faithfulness is stronger even than the faithfulness of dawn, and that of every sunrise ever to occur in the history of this physical earth, each one has been as different from the one before as a snowflake. And He gets to create the sunrise in a continuous roll around the globe as each part of the world -- each time zone, even -- sees the birth of a new day.
So morning strengthens me.
Now the sleep loss is a sacrifice, and I'm generally undisciplined as it is, so getting to bed at nine is actually harder than getting up at five.
And I freely confess that if it weren't for Lent, and this being a sort of holy dedication to the Lord, I wouldn't do it at all. My usual morning routine is to shut off the alarm and get another forty-five minutes of sleep.
So you're awake for your whole LDTTotS? That's awful, not to be able to sleep through it!
I'll start saying a prayer for you during that two-hour stretch -- might as well make myself useful, while I'm up. :)
I am in awe. This is the 2nd day this week I've wasted the entire morning. I skipped class thinking I would catch up on studying, but instead I while it away, doing nothing. And I definitely wasn't up at 5. I need your kind of discipline.
As for my LDTTotS, I think it's 3am to 5am. I hate when I wake up during that time. It's too early to do anything, there's nothing on tv, I can't call anyone.... if I'm awake and worrying at that time, I am completely stuck with my thoughts. ugh.
I actually really like BEING up early in the morning, around 5:30 or 6, but I don't like GETTING up that early.
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