What I do: The Morning

One of my blogging issues is that I don’t know what anybody wants to know about me. But lately, I’ve been reading other websites and have realized something: people want to know about nearly everything. So, in case you've wondered what a day in the life of an average pastor and mediocre writer is like, you’ll get some insight around here.

What does the morning look like in my house? We start early, with the alarm clock going off at 5 AM. Why?

Because chaos is coming later in the day. I’m a pastor. Ann works from home for a web/print company. Oh, and she’s the primary person for homeschooling our children. I help with that as I can, but there are three kids with all the school work and a few activities and church life that are part of our life. So if we wait too long, chaos will be the first thing we hit.

Which is fine from time to time, but it’s a terrible way to set your life up for every day. So, we start early to try to get ahead of it all.

What are the main things we start each day with?

1. Exercise

2. Spiritual devotions

3. Tasty warm beverages

Seriously. Those three things are the key to a morning in our house. Here’s how it unfolds:

Step 1: the night before, we make sure that our 25-cup coffee urn (like you see at hotels/conferences) is filled with water and the timer is set right. This will kick on about 4:30 AM and we’ll have hot water when we get up rather than waiting for it to heat. It also holds enough water to do both the coffee and the Choffy, our two drinks of choice. The first is one of the greatest parts of global trade. The second is a brewed cocoa product, like a chocolate tea. Ann and Angela love it.

Step 2: the night before, we deliberately wind down with a touch of reading and conversation to settle in for a good night’s sleep. We strive to be away from PCs and TVs after about 830 PM, unless we just have to do it.

Step 3: the alarm goes off, first thing in the morning. The specialty snooze setting is 2 minutes, so it gets hit, and we lay there for a morning snuggle that is no longer than 120 seconds. Not long enough to go back to sleep, just long enough that our waking up is a together thing. (We’re romantic like that.)

Step 4: two minutes after, the alarm goes off again. We get up, make the bed, hit the bathroom, and then go down and get the coffee and Choffy brewing. Water’s already hot, so it’s ready to go.

Step 5: Get dressed. (Yes, we did Step 4 in our bathrobes.) We put on our exercise clothes, grab some water and our coffee/Choffy, and go start our devotional times.

For both of us, that is Bible reading, prayer, Bible copying (another thought for another day), and some other personal growth reading. All of this while journaling (yes, I’ve finally become a journal-keeper. Again, another post.)

We carry that forward to about 6 AM, when the kids start getting up. Which leads us to….

Step 6: The kids are up. We all exercise as a family. It’s some basic stretches and a 25 minute walk through the neighborhood. Not a leisure stroll, but a break-a-sweat-and-breathe-hard power walk.

Step 7: Shower. Seriously, did you expect otherwise? Ann and I rotate through, with one of us working on our devotional time while the other showers.

Step 8: Dressed, devotions done, head down to grab breakfast.

That brings us to 8 AM. A brief family prayer time, and then I head to work at study/preparation and Ann starts teaching.

That’s it. Our mornings in a nutshell. I’ll break down some aspects in future posts, but if you don’t know how to shower, I don’t know how to help you with that.

Doug