Morning Mercies

Ever since I was a little kid, I have hated mornings. I was never one that loved to wake up with the sun and get a head start on their day. No, I wanted to stay in bed as late as I could, bundled up in my layers of blankets and stayed in my pajamas until it was absolutely time for me to get up and get ready for the day. I did this from the time I was little all the way up until a few months ago. I wasn’t one to snooze the alarm, many times but I would make sure to calculate the exact time that I had to get up without being late. 

But getting pregnant has unlocked some new early bird special that I hadn’t known existed. The first trimester, I was still the usual self, maybe even a little worse. I didn’t feel well rested unless I slept in bed until 11 and then slowly got ready for the day. As a student, this was a nightmare. But in the last few weeks, I have had a new relationship with mornings that I have come to appreciate. With the combination of New Year's Resolutions and the starting up of a new term at school, I felt that I needed to get up earlier so I could have a slow start to my mornings, where I could eat breakfast, do my devotional, and then get ready for the day. 

I’ve stated in previous posts, I have been contemplating a lot about my life. I have had to take a deep look at my academic and aspiring career, I’ve had to look at the things that I am consuming, and another aspect of my life that I’ve had to analyze is my anxiety. I grew up always struggling with anxiety, trying to be in control of my life and my emotions, leaving me overwhelmed and breaking down. Getting pregnant has just made me realize that there is a lot about growing babies that I absolutely cannot control. I have to have trust in God and my body to be doing the work of growing my babies and it has left me feeling extremely anxious. 

So getting up in the mornings, I have decided to start spending more time pursuing God. I had the goal, not resolution, that I was going to try and spend time with God every day, however long it was. I’ve been reading New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp and journaling to God about the devotional as well as my internal thoughts that I have been struggling with. While this time usually only takes 10-20 minutes, it has allowed me to have a deeper hunger and reliance on God. 

That is when I realized that I was consuming so much negativity from social media. From comparing myself to others, or even wondering what people thought of me, I felt like I was allowing people on the other side of a screen to decide my value in life rather than allowing God to decide and show me my value. Since taking a step away from social media, while not completely cutting it out, I have started to feel a refreshing realization that there was a lot of weight coming from such a small part of my life. My focus that I once was giving to people’s opinions suddenly shifted to a desire of learning more about God and scripture and a Christian life. 

The only social media app that I currently have on my phone is Instagram because it is the one platform that I get consistent Christian content along with a positive platform of seeing people’s lives rather than just consuming opinions that people share on facebook or videos of negativity on TikTok. My time on Instagram has now been a positive experience of finding encouraging videos and posts about the Christian life that have allowed me to feel confident in continuing my journey of pursuing God. 

My pursuit of God has now become a thirst of wanting to know more about scripture, hermeneutics, and just faith in general. I also have become more appreciative of the Christian community that I have at church and school. As I have delved deeper into my relationship with God and allowed myself to be surrendered to Him, I have realized that there is so much value in being surrounded by people who are actively pursuing God as well. While I have been immersed in this community for a little while, I hadn’t felt the appreciation that I do right now. 

With this, I feel confident that I want to continue to grow deeper in my relationship with God and my community. This time in pursuit of Him through my devotional time, and prayer and reading, I have also been able to slowly chip away at my anxiety that pesters me about whether I am doing well at growing my babies because I am able to remind myself that God is knitting them together in my womb and He made my body so that it is capable of growing them. They are such a beautiful blessing in my life and I am so excited to start a life with them and I know that this season God is preparing me to become a more godly wife and mom. So while mornings weren’t exactly my forte, they have been the beginning of something new and wonderful in my life.