What gets you up in the morning?

This morning, I groggily swung my legs over the side of my bed and planted them on the floor after my alarm disturbed me from my sleep. I turned my fan off, looked at my disheveled curly hair and half-shut eyes still crusty from sleep in my mirror and shrugged, "Let's go," I whispered to my reflection - and my day began. 

My professor for my 9 a.m. class is always very cheerful. Whether it's the coffee, or the eagerness to learn and teach, I don't know - but I've never had a bad class with him, and I've taken a handful of his classes throughout my four years here. 

It's a small class, only 12 of us, so we have the chance to truly discuss concepts, themes, and emotions in the stories, novels and poems we're reading. This morning, as we settled in our uncomfortable desks, he passed his gaze throughout the room, looked each of us directly in the eyes and asked this question: "What gets you up in the morning?" 

I was taken aback. I hadn't expected a question like this, we were supposed to be discussing the Civil War and Emily Dickinson! One girl shared that she got up in the mornings because of the possibility to learn something, even something small, every day. Another man, looking equally, if not more disheveled than me, said, "Coffee" we all laughed and then his tone changed as he said, "I get up because I want to make something of my life. I don't want to be a failure." 

One by one, the students of my class shared what gets them up in the morning. I, however, sat silent. My wheels were turning, I had never been asked a question like this before. I found myself truly asking this question, I mean really, why do I get up every morning? What keeps me going? Do I have a purpose for getting out of bed? 

I thought back to this morning: I got out of  bed because my alarm told me I had to. I got out of bed because I had a class I couldn't be late for. I got dressed and put on my makeup because I wanted to look like I put at least some effort into the day. I put on my backpack, grabbed some coffee and a bagel, and ate and drank because I was hungry. 

But I did these things without thinking. I was just doing, doing, doing, simply because I had to. I was suddenly shocked to realize I had been living my days for the past however many months with no purpose. I realize I'm not going to wake up every morning feeling like Audrey Hepburn or Mother Theresa, but if I'm going to disturb my dreams and get out of my comfortable bed, it's surely got to be for a reason! 

It would be easy, or maybe even hypocritical, to say the simple "Christian" answer. I pictured myself saying it with my hair tied back in a bun, wearing a turtleneck, in a chipper voice, "My love of God gets me up in the morning!" But the truth is.... do we even think about God when we get up? I sure don't! The only mention of God in the morning is when my alarm goes off and I say, "Oh God, I'm so tired, just five more minutes please!?"

But the fact that I'm still alive and breathing this morning, is a miracle. God could have chosen to take my life last night in my dreams, who knows. So maybe I don't have a concrete, black and white answer to what gets me up in the morning, and so what? For me, it's a string of little things, little purposes. 

I get up to see my boyfriend, because I love him and I love spending time with him. I get up to laugh and grab breakfast or lunch with my friends. I get up to celebrate the sunshine or the birds or maybe just the fact that a zit miraculously disappeared overnight. I get up to do something, learn something - even if my day consists of reading a few pages of a book or finishing one assignment, it's at least something that I have fulfilled. I get up to push one more day ahead, push one more day toward some goal, large or small, one day at a time. 

Because life isn't lived by the year, or the months - it's lived in the days and the hours. So what gets you up in the morning? 

Scars of healing

Though the rash and the scabs have healed over from my bout of shingles I had only a few weeks ago, there are small flower-shaped scars, like hydrangeas, in their place. When my shingles were at their worst, even wearing a simple cotton T-shirt hurt because it rubbed against my raw, tender rash. Fabric became like lemon juice on a paper cut, or rubbing your eye after cutting up a jalapeno. Something so simple and harmless, like a cotton T-shirt, rubbed wrongly at my most tender and achy parts. 

For a class, I have to read a bunch of books by modern Christian authors. It's a class on non-fiction Christian narratives, and I can say now halfway through the semester, that I have never had a class touch me so deeply in my four years here at this University. 

Have you ever had a book  or a story touch you in your innermost part? The spot inside you that is tender and raw, that is only half-healed but not quite there yet. Reading Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott was like re-opening those hydrangea-shaped scars on my side. 

I couldn't relate to her life even remotely. She had grown up in a home that hated Christianity, she was an alcoholic, she did drugs, she had had an abortion and almost got another one until deep despair took over her and she had her son, Sam, instead - her treasured, kindhearted, son who she almost threw away. But it wasn't that suddenly a bolt of lightning from the heavens struck her or that she had this huge "God moment" and BAM her life did a 180, but rather that her story was raw, real, and spoke of true human struggles, even after you become a Christian. 

I sat in on a group once that was sharing their testimonies, as if sharing all the bad things in their lives would suddenly turn people over to Jesus.

“My father left my mother when I was a child. I never knew him, and I don’t have the desire to know him,” one guy shared with head hung in dramatic reverence to his story. “I grew up in a broken home, my mom had to take care of five children on her own, and I so eagerly gave up on God that I was left with a distaste for anyone who labeled themselves ‘Christians’.”

That man shared his story as if getting to Jesus, or understanding Jesus, was easy. It was chronological and it was what I like to call a “lost and found” story: First I was lost, and then I was found. First I was broken, and then I was healed. First I was bad, and then I was good. But I struggled to fit in the in between bits; to me, a person didn't just suddenly change who they were entirely. You can’t just go from broken to fixed with the snap of a finger. I think things like healing take a lot of time and pain and a lot of other messy junk that nobody wants to talk about. Even after you’re glued back together, you can still see the cracks from the once broken places. Even after you've healed from a wound, or shingles, or surgery, the scars are still there to remind us. 

Jesus was radical in his days wasn't he? I mean he talked to women prostitutes and hung out with the drunkards and the money-hungry tax collectors who cheated and swindled innocent people out of their hard earned money. He touched lepers and diseased people and blind, poor, crippled, people. Jesus hung out with the losers, the scum of the earth, the people who nobody ever in their right minds wanted to be associated with. So tell me, why do we as the body of Christ, as Christians, act so high and mighty all the time and think way too often that we are better than others? We look down on the gays, on the people with HIV and AIDS and STD's, the woman who had a baby out of wedlock, the prostitutes, the alcoholics, the druggies, the abandoned, instead of actually for ONCE doing what Christ himself commanded of us - to show those people LOVE and to treat them with at least their smallest, most basic right: to look them in the eyes and see them as a human being with struggles and problems and sins just like you and I. 

I'm not telling you as a Christian to go out and start accepting everything now, but I firmly believe that God created and loves each and every one of us. He loves you just as much as he loves that homosexual. He loves you just as much as he loves that 16-year-old pregnant girl. He loves you just as much as he loves that divorced woman struggling with feelings of betrayal. So what makes you so special? Are you suddenly special because you slapped a Jesus fish on your bumper and you wear W.W.J.D around your wrist? Don't become like the Pharisees who focused on the things that make us look good, and the things that separate us from other human beings, (Matthew 23:23-24). And never forget, that we are all sinners. We all make mistakes. We all have problems and short-comings. And we all need the love of Christ. A person, no matter the size of their sin or struggle, no matter who they are or where they've been, still has the chance to enter the kingdom of God. 

Maybe they just need some healing to take place. Maybe someone just needs somebody, anybody, to reach out to them for once and just listen without passing judgment. Or for someone to see their scars as something real, instead of passing over or ignoring them. Because scars may be signs of hurt, pain, or struggle - but scars are also signs of healing. 

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

(From an old journal entry I wrote last summer. Written at sunset by the end of my dock.)

The late August sunset stretches her long arms out onto the water, into the sky, across my face. Her warmth is weakening, becoming less strong than it was in the July heat. There is a crispness in the air - almost bitter - that wasn't there before. A season will soon end... a new one shall soon begin. 

Life has a way of sneaking up on you doesn't it? We groan and complain for a new season, but  suddenly it is here without even realizing it. And in another fleeting moment - it vanishes once again. My mother always tells me, "Don't wish for tomorrow, for tomorrow never comes." 

How many tomorrows are we going to ask for? Long for? Wish for? We look too much to the future to what could be and not what is. Our lives are but fleeting moments. Like the dew in  the morning, like the smoke of a blown out candle. 

And now, the August sun has gone to bed, tucked tightly in its sheets of clouds. The sly west wind whispers in my ear and dances in my hair, "Come play!" the wind beckons, "come play before my bitter brother, the North wind comes out to spite you." I turn my face toward its direction and smile, "Tomorrow, wind, tomorrow I will play," and her reply was but a faint whisper. 

I wish I had the courage to live today not tomorrow. There is a person deep within my soul that longs to come out and live her dreams. Travel the world. Meet interesting people with stories to tell and write about. But.... 

But, graduation, financial worries, and marriage is looming in the near future. Money is needed if one wants to travel the world. Commitment and unselfishness and sharing dreams comes with marriage. And my writing? It is sitting passively in the pages of a journal, unknown and untouched by the world. 

Dusk is upon me and goosebumps are creeping onto the surface of my skin. As I stare out into the calm water of this lake and the darkening sky, a realization has made its way into my mind: My life has become nothing but a string of tomorrows. 

Tomorrow I will write a novel. Tomorrow I will pursue my dreams. Tomorrow I will travel to here and there. Tomorrow. 

But tomorrow never comes. Today is the time; the time to do what I need and want to do. Today is the day.  

Third Time's a Charm

Here I sit, nearly 11 at night and I have rummaged through every last memory box, picture album, and old forgotten journals. I am nostalgic in the worst way. I look back on many things in my past and think to myself, "How wonderful things were back then." Especially now, a senior in college about to graduate in May with no job lined up and no clue what to do with my future, parts of my past seem pretty great right about now. 

Third time's a charm for me. I began a blog on Wordpress a couple of years ago. I had to do it for a class, but I kept up with it and people loved it. About three months ago I was going through this phase where I thought about absolutely nothing other than my future career. It consumed me. So I deleted everything off that blog and began a new blog on Social Media, thinking only of my future employers of course. 

It bombed. Actually, it would have been quite good. I got 100 views in the first day I started it. But I became stressed - about my future, my job, my life, and more. So much so that as a 21-year-old I got shingles (which the doctor said was related to stress), I had four canker sores in my mouth at one time, had the worst stress-related acne breakout I ever had, and even lost a few pounds - all within a matter of a couple months. So needless to say, I didn't have the energy or time to put into that second blog as I had hoped. 

Now, I have finally come to the reasons why I truly want to blog, and the reasons why the other two bombed. 

1. I wrote for other people - not myself. Yes, sometimes I wrote stuff I liked, but I had to do it, writing felt like a chore sometimes rather than something I have always been in love with. 

2. I told my followers when I would publish a new post. You read any good blogger and most of the time they'll tell you to have a certain day or days to post a new blog. But again, I felt guilty for missing my own deadline I created for myself that I just eventually gave up. So now, instead of writing when I have to, I'm going to write when I want to. 

3. I had a strict subject to follow. Again, most blogs obviously have a theme or specific topic of choice which they follow - which is great! But I felt restricted by those subjects sometimes and my creativity bubble would burst. Now, not only will I write when I want but also what I want. 


So there you have it. A little taste of this blog. I love to write about everyday ordinary things that become extraordinary in my life. I will write about heartache, or laughter, or pens, or shoelaces, or summer, or the way the waves sound as they lap against the shore. I will about whatever comes into my heart. Enjoy