Happy Soul Tending Tuesday to you friend,

It’s still jolting.

I know people are different than me. Duh. Of course they are. But guess what friends, different means . . . different.

I was talking with friends over dinner and the conversation meandered into early morning thoughts. I have an on/off switch. For the most part, when I wake up, I am on. I do not love to lay in bed. I do not linger after I hit the snooze button, namely because snooze buttons require that an alarms needs to be set. Why linger when there is a whole wonderful day to get up and DO THINGS.

In short, my early morning thoughts are often of what I will do that day.

Onsi said when he wakes up he loves to lay in bed and think about nothing or about how nice it is to lay in bed. I asked him if he thinks about what he will do. “No.” Just like that, no.

This is so foreign to me, I cannot even think of what to write to let you know how foreign it is.

Hannah, his wife, added that she wakes up thinking about the plan for the day and what she will get done. Though similar to me, as we kept talking I realized I do not think about a plan for the day because plans feel constricting to me.

So I wonder, what do you think about in the early mornings without consciously thinking about it.

In summer camp as a child we sang a song that included the lyrics “My heart is ready Lord, I want to sing and dance, I want to wake the dawn. Awake my soul, Awake lyre and harp, I want to”—and then I can’t remember the lyrics—but doubtful they were “get going with my to-do list!”

The song seems to come from either Psalm 108 or Psalm 57.

It’s that line “awake my soul” I’ve been reflecting on after Onsi, Hannah, and I talked about early morning thoughts.

If your soul were to speak for itself in the first shimmering moments of the day, what would it say? What is it ready for?

How can we each still be ourselves and tend to our souls, allowing God to feed us in the tending? It’s okay that I think about what I get to do in a day and you might think of the people you will see or the fun you will have or what you will learn that day. God delights in our uniqueness.

The question for today, for you and God to communicate on is this—how awake is your soul?

Where do you feel a bit on autopilot? Where might you be burned out? Where might you be bored out? What would your soul awake look like?

Happy Soul Tending Tuesday.

P.S. The phrase “bored out” was new to me today. It was used by Rachel DuFour as she and her husband recorded the November workshop! I am so excited for you to get to participate, I can hardly wait and will probably wake up and think about it tomorrow. Hehe.

Photo by Sebastian Hans on Unsplash