As Neil Sedaka might have sung on a morning like this, “Waking up is so hard to do.”
It’s one of those days when I open my eyes and feel like a Mack truck hit me, and then backed up to see what it hit. A morning when the coffee can’t be brewed fast enough. A morning when what I would really like is for someone to say, “There, there, you’ve done so much already this week, why don’t you take the morning off, and stay in your pjs for a while?”
Someone like my mother.
But barring a mother’s excuse, getting up is the order of the day. It’s fulfilling your commitments whether your emotions are in line or not. It’s true, sometimes you really feel like getting up; if you’re like Jack, you actually like (most) mornings. But whether he felt like it, or whether he didn’t, he still just got up. He still went anyway.
I remember my husband in the dim quiet of a new dawn, sitting on the edge of our bed, lacing up his work boots and clumping out to the kitchen. There he would collect his well-worn lunchbox and thermos of coffee, feed the felines and head out to work. This had always been his practice. To get up and go, to provide for his family, to give his employer a fair return on his investment. Not always inspired or enthused, but grateful for work and determined to complete what was before him the best he could. Whether he’d slept soundly or whether he was dragging, he got up and did his job anyway. In any way.
Grateful for his faithfulness, I choose to follow suit, get up, and do today’s work. Coffee needs refilling anyway. Make it a great day, friends, and I’ll do the same.