Yesterday morning I couldn’t wake up. Just couldn’t. I normally roll out of bed when Rasmus is finished in the bathroom, so that I am up and ready to start my day when he leaves for the office. Yesterday it didn’t happen. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, couldn’t throw off that heavy feeling of sleep rolling over me.
So I turned over and went back to sleep for another two hours.
It’s a new year and a new start and I’m feeling simultaneously inspired and lethargic. Because it may be a whole new year, we may be past the winter solstice and on our way to brighter days. But right now? It’s miserable and grey and wet and cold and so windy that planes are being grounded all over northern Europe.
Today does not feel like a day for pursuing big ideas and plans.
And yet today is what I have to work with. I never get to do today again. Tomorrow I will throw off yesterday and begin again. But today… what will I do with today?
This morning, about half an hour into my morning ritual of reading through my emails, facebook updates and twitter, I suddenly saw light out of the corner of my eye. From my spot at the dining table in our north-facing kitchen, I could glance through the hallway into our home office/guestroom dump room and see the sun spilling across the windowframe onto a little patch of wooden floor.
I immediately got up and practically skipped across the flat to sit on the floor in this little spot of sunlight. The back of our flat looks out south over the city, to the gently-sloping forested hills in the distance, and it was here, in the east, that the sun was forging it’s way up in the morning sky.
I sat there for five minutes. That was all the time there was to enjoy the warmth and light of the sun before it again disappeared behind a bank of dark cloud. But I found such energy in those five minutes.
What is it that makes watching the sun rise such a powerfully hope and peace filled moment?
I think it has something to do with the promise of light. The promise of growth and productivity. And the reminder that this cycle of days never stops. Every morning is a new opportunity to embrace something positive and life-giving, to push myself to reach my potential and draw it out of others.
And perhaps that peace also comes from knowing that tomorrow will come like today did. Whether today is that productive, enjoyable, useful day I hoped for, or whether at some point it all comes tumbling down around me, tomorrow will come again and I can start over again. Each new morning brings new hope, new grace, new mercies, new energy for the journey onward.
And maybe tomorrow I will wake up to rain again. But I hope the memory of that sunny moment this morning will keep me energised.
