I wish I were a natural morning person. 

I imagine waking up minutes before my alarm, a character in a bright and shiny Folgers commercial. I stretch my arms above my head and delicately unfold the covers. My feet hit the floor as the sun rises and the birds chirp outside, the soundtrack to my reunion with the conscious world. 

Instead, because I know myself and my propensity to linger just long enough to cause existential meltdown, I’ve developed a series of hacks to force myself awake.

The biggest change: my phone stays in the kitchen overnight, with a backup alarm should I miss the first 15 million chirps of my vintage alarm clock. This kitchen time bomb has another benefit: I’m so nervous it will wake the whole house—therefore ruining my precious quiet time—that I’m sure to be up before it goes off. 

The vintage alarm clock I place on the floor, five feet from my bed. This distance is just enough I can’t possibly lean over to turn it off, or risk falling out of bed altogether. I know this from experience, of course. 

Once vertical, I mentally shrug and begin the day. 

Not having a phone nearby is key. There’s no “Quick, let me check my email!” or worse “Let me read the news, just in case something bad has happened since I last looked.” The former places me into work mode; the latter, into despair. 

Morning news consumption has always been a temptation. It proved a point of contention in the early days of my marriage, too. Before we bought our house we lived in a tiny apartment, with the world’s tiniest bathroom attached to our bedroom. The shower was so small that my giant husband still bears a scar on his head from the showerhead, and you could often hear his elbows banging into the shower’s fiberglass walls.

I used to wake up early and get ready in said bathroom, with Mike asleep nearby. While putting on makeup or doing my hair, I would listen to NPR or BBC Newshour on full blast. AirPods had not yet been invented, of course, so when Mike and I puttered around the house in those early days, we didn’t yell at each other over the podcasts playing in our ears.  

One morning while listening to the news, Mike reached his breaking point.

“I cannot wake up to famine and war yet again!” he yelled from the bed. Touché. 

We all desire smooth mornings, which is why my morning routine really begins the night before. 

I make a vocal pronouncement sometime in the hours after dinner that I will be in bed by 9pm, no matter what chaos is unfolding in our house at the time. It’s a reminder more to myself than to my family members, who don’t comment on my self-improvement whims. They’ve long understood what I am only just beginning to see:  I’m the problem, it’s me. 

It used to be easier, when my kids were fast asleep by eight, allowing me precious hours of alone time before my own eyelids closed. 

But now they’re determined to outlast every adult, revenge procrastination at its best. 

Nine o’clock hits and Margaret can often be found practicing cheerleading moves in front of her mirror, high from an ISU win. Or perhaps she’s decided to reorganize her Barbie shoe collection, or begin writing the next great American novel. She’s donned some strange combination of clothing she finds, a fedora and 80s fingerless gloves. So important is her work that even the suggestion of bedtime is met with anguish.

It’s amazing what children can dream up when the temptation of screentime is long past, and the only alternative is sleep. Most nights, Margaret tucks herself in and turns out the light when her most pressing tasks are complete. And so I tolerate this bedtime dance.  

I used to believe I could only fall asleep after my children. In the end, I’m no match for Margaret’s late night pageantry. It’s even worse on the weekends when virtual gaming time—a modern-day LAN party—brings together the entire junior high. Suggestions of bedtime before 9pm fall on deaf ears. FOMO is real, even for 6th graders. 

I remember my mom waking up at the crack of dawn for much of my life. I think I finally see the appeal. I’m also beginning to understand why she was so annoyed with me when I woke up early to do my hair, a blowdryer threatening her hard-won peace. If it’s possible to atone for a decades-old offense, I would like to formally apologize. I’m sorry, Mom, for prioritizing my looks over your sanity. It really wasn’t fair of me. 

I finally recognize the groundedness early mornings provide. So much so that I’m willing to risk falling out of bed to achieve it. 

Whether sunrises with tea or late nights in fedoras, we all need space to be unobserved. We all deserve to delight in who we are.

While working on my MBA, with two small children and a full-time job, I sometimes stayed the night at a local hotel. After studying in silence, I would watch trashy tv and eat snacks in bed. 

I began looking forward to this respite from the daily grind. I still had all of my day-to-day demands, the caring for and working, the cleaning and exercising and studying. But in those moments, every plate I’d been juggling was left suspended in air, no longer threatening to fall. 

Like my hotel nights, nature’s cadence forces us to pause in a world with few barriers. We can order products from China, FaceTime with friends in all timezones, and order DoorDash at midnight. We can choose to power through accounting classes or long days at work. And still, the sun keeps setting and rising, parentheses to our industry.

It’s standardized testing time at school and for some in my household, it’s a terrifying prospect. While one child barely bats an eye, gleeful about the candy teachers provide to soothe the jitters, the other lies awake in panic. 

As a child I was plagued by my own nighttime anxieties, some of which follow me into adulthood. Is the stove off? Are the doors locked? Will tonight be the night I need to employ my in-case-of-fire plan?

Somehow, perhaps impossibly, motherhood didn’t magnify these worries. I’d spent a lifetime imagining the worst. Adding a baby to the mix felt like just another day in my brain. 

I remember the first night after each child was born, left alone in the hospital room to care for the tiny alien I’d just delivered. With Graydon, Mike snored on the couch by my side. (If you read that and are now busy giving him the side eye I most certainly already did, at that point we’d been awake for more than 20 hours. Exhaustion had finally bested new-parent adrenaline.)

When Margaret arrived two years later, I’d wisened up. 

I sent my snoring husband home, leaving Margaret and I to face the unknown. As with Graydon, I knew instinctively I only needed to make it through that first night. In the morning, everything else would fall into place. And it did.

We braved the darkness together, fearful at first, then in quiet surrender. We emerged on the other side alive, if not rested, ready to face the day anew.  

There are times in my life when I’ve wished for do-overs, for seasons to pass more quickly. I’ve hoped for new relationships and new perspectives. I’ve wanted to speed up the days before a trip and lengthen the time spent away. 

But creation’s clock keeps each day in check, forcing us to experience our life in whatever pace it unfolds. It’s a promise, of sorts, that life marches forward. 

“It will all look better in the morning,” I said to the stranger I drove home this week, clearly down on her luck. 

“It will all look better in the morning,” I promise my nervous test-taker who can’t sleep.

“It will all look better in the morning,” I convince myself, fresh off a parenting misstep.

My words feel lacking. We all know a good night’s sleep doesn’t change one’s circumstances, though perhaps a rested mind can perceive them differently.

I think of the darkest nights, sometimes, too. We read of an immigrant detained, fearing the worst. We remember the Passover, parents watching and waiting. And we honor Good Friday, a dawn not yet certain.

In our own homes, we sit at bedsides, pressing cool washcloths on feverish foreheads. We lie awake pondering overdue bills or a child’s struggles, wanting a different tomorrow. 

Some problems don’t change overnight. Or ever. 

But it doesn’t stop me from hoping for a respite for others, for space to delight in who they are.

I wish it for the people I serve at Safe Harbor and for church members I don’t yet know. It’s what I want for the husband I love, regardless of his snoring and NPR censure. 

I want to fast forward the darkest of nights, for everyone hurting. 

And when the sun rises as it always does, I wish for everyone to have emerged on the other side, alive if not rested, ready to face the day anew.