Step Three: Making Time for God
I’ve decided to start changing my own sleep schedule to carve out some time with God, some undistracted, peaceful, silent, much-needed time with God. This means that I am consciously moving my bedtime 10 minutes earlier and waking up 10 minutes earlier. This is more difficult than you would think, especially with a toddler’s unpredictable waking time. This past week, I’ve had about three really good opportunities to connect with God in the morning before I start my day. It’s tricky timing. Sometimes my little guy wakes up extra early (6am), and sometimes he “sleeps in” until about 7. So making a set meeting time for God doesn’t go according to the clock, necessarily…unless I wake up at 5:30am, which is just not going to happen. (More power to you, friends who actually do this!) I’ve started risking it with a 6:20 wake up for myself. Practically speaking, if I really want to make this work for myself, I need to BE in bed by 10pm. Do you know how hard that is when your husband is a night-owl? Catching up on our day together might need to happen earlier. This might be one of those whole-family adjustments.
The bigger question is: Do I notice a difference in my day when I begin with communing with God? Absolutely. The days that I don’t get this morning meeting time with God, things seem hectic and I often feel like the day is going by too fast, working in a frazzled state. When I meet with God first thing in the morning, it helps to set the tempo for the day. It helps me see and prioritize with Kingdom eyes so that the things that truly matter stand out a little more and the things that don’t matter much tend to fade away. Does this cultivate the themes of Advent: Love, Joy, Peace, Hope? You bet. Seeing the day through Kingdom eyes does that.
I’m really excited to continue doing this Simplifying thing. I hope I can…waking up earlier IS HARD! When I’m in my nice cozy bed all snuggled up and warm, it’s so tempting to just hit the snooze button and fall back to sleep for a few more minutes. This is going to take some serious discipline if I’m going to stick with it.
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