5:30am

It's almost 7:00am as I'm typing this, but I started the day at 5:30. Before you go admiring me for being an early riser, let me stop you. I'm not. Even now, an hour and a half in, my eyes keep peering over at the bedroom door and grow heavier with the desire to sleep as they do. I won't go to bed. But I sure want to.

That's the difference, I think. Attitude. Decisiveness. Determination.
You see, I'm changing the way I look at this morning person or not morning person thing. Because I'm finding it's not really about that. It's about WHO I want to be in the great story of my life.
Will it be a great story at all? And what makes it great?

There are people in my life right now that are making a difference. {And I guarantee most of them get up early.} It might be a small difference, or it might be a move to the other side of the world and shake things up difference. There are many of them. And for a long time now - years, really - I've felt that these people are in a different league then me. I've sat on the sidelines in my "mundane" "normal" life and longed to be like them. I've longed to walk beside them and sit in cafes and enthusiastically tell our stories and experiences and adventures and feel a genuine camaraderie with this species of world-changing powerhouse superhuman. I've longed, but that's the extent of it. Because truth be told, I'm by nature a hermit. I'm socially awkward and uncomfortable and it's SO much safer for all of us if I stay shut away at home where I can't generally screw things up and say the absolute wrong thing or get red-faced when I'm greeting someone familiar I bumped into at the store.

Excuse me, but: What a load of crap.

No, Seriously! I have spent YEARS of my adult life now hiding. I have accepted that I am too awkward and that I make other people uncomfortable because of it and that I'm a waste of their valuable time and energy. I genuinely, GENUINELY, believed that.

I do not write that for your pity, so put away the tissues and hugs ;-) I'm writing it because I KNOW I'm not the only one who's ever felt that way.

The only thing that will make our stories great is if we stop letting dumb, stupid, ignorant lies control our ever move. Listen, I'm honestly worked up about this. It gets at me. When you realize how much time you've wasted and how many people you've grown distant from, all because you've let yourself believe you're just not worth it, it should bring up some feelings.

Embrace those feelings! And let them usher in change.

I woke up at 5:30am when I normally wake up closer to 9am as an act of defiance, albeit a little one. And at the same time, an act of surrender.

I am defying the lies. I am waking up hours before my kids so that the first moment they lay eyes on me, it will be a revved up me who's spent time in the power-infusing presence of God and not a defeated me who's dragging herself around and wishing the day would fly by so I can hide in sleep again. I'm defying my own nature and forcing myself to examine who I am and who I want to me.

And I'm surrendering my sleep so I can give God the first hours of my day. So I can change. I'm surrendering all the things I've believed about myself for a really, really, really long time.

Whether or not I'm a "morning person" plays no part in this. Am I existing just to keep myself safe and comfortable? Or am I making every. single. moment. count. for something OTHER than ME.

I raise my glass of Matcha to you, friends. Here's to living on purpose.