Most Mornings

Most mornings I wake at 6:30. Not because I want to, but because I set an alarm and that’s when it goes off. Stupid alarm.

Sometimes I hit snooze. Okay. Most times I hit snooze. Five minutes. I just need five more minutes. By 6:40, I’m up, the coffee is grinding, and I’m preparing my cup “just the way I like it.” By 6:45 or 6:50, I’m sitting on the sofa with a book, the mug of steaming coffee, and the TV tuned to a YouTube channel that plays Tim Janis tunes while panning some lovely landscape in some fabulous country I’ll probably never get to visit.

By 7:30, I’m walking around my neighborhood, saying “good morning” to my neighbors who are also out and about. By 10:00, with the walk out of the way and my shower taken and my makeup applied, and my hair done, and all surface household chores done, I’m sitting at my desk (where I am now), doing whatever work has to be accomplished for that day.

There’s always so much to do in such a short period of time.

I’m a timekeeper. I always have been. I think in terms of minutes and hours. It will take me fifteen minutes to complete this task. Or: if I can get to the post office by noon, I can be home by noon-thirty.

I have very clear memories of the summer days of youth in which I kept a notebook where I jotted down times. Get up by this time. Eat breakfast by this time. One line I remember well is an entry reminding me what time the game show Concentration came on. I couldn’t miss Concentration. I had scheduled time for reading, for playing, for meeting my “best friend for life,” Carla, at the pool.

During the summer months–which in those days were the twelve weeks of June, July, and August–Carla and I practically lived at that pool. We played beneath the crystal blue water where the sun danced along the wake like “diamond glints on snow.” Other times, as competitors, we swam our necessary laps, timing each other. In our teen years, we observed the other as we prepared to try out for the synchronized swim team. One had to be able to swim the width of the pool three times, underwater, without coming up for air.

‘Twern’t easy . . . but we did it.

As an adult, I continued my timekeeping. I have thought and planned based on the clock now for nearly 67 years (as I’m not really sure when this whole thing started, I can only logically go back to the beginning of my life). I cannot imagine being any other way and I have difficulty understanding those who don’t prescribe to a clock’s ticking and tocking. Once, when in the Bahamas, I nearly had a daily massive stroke because, there, everyone lives, loves, works, and breaths on Island Time. They’ll tell you, “Pick you up at 8:00 a.m.,” but what they mean is “sometime before lunch.”

But live and let live, I reckon.

Truth is, we all live on time. Borrowed time, some would say. But it’s not really borrowed, because it’s a gift. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them (Psalm 139:16 ESV). Even as I took my first breath on that August evening in 1957 and someone (a nurse, I presume) called out the time, my “hours, minutes, and seconds” began ticking down.

Question is, what will I have done when the clock freezes on the last second of my life? As the old saying goes–it’s not the date of birth or the date of death, but what occurred in the dash in between. I plan to fill it as best I can and, hopefully, when my time in Heaven begins, I will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

[Image by congerdesign from Pixabay]