I spent another full hour slowly coming to, keeping an ear out for any sign of unhappiness from Meg's corner of the house. Finally, at 8:36, Dave sat up in bed, leaned over me and squinted at the red numbers on my alarm clock. "Does it say 6:30 or 8:30?" he asked. I told him. He lay back down. I rolled over on my side to watch my husband's face as he slept. I put my hand out and laid it lightly on his head. The bedclothes were pulled up under his chin. I looked at them, and in the soft morning light that came filtering through our shaded windows, the ugly steel gray of our hand-me-down bedspread, the stretched out shapelessness of our cotton blanket, and the worn sheets that don't match with anything all seemed--for once--at peace with one another.
I looked back at my husband's face and thought how glad I was to have him beside me. Lines from a love song drifted into my mind:
Wanna wake up every morning to your sweet face...
Always.
Baby Boy moved inside me, letting me know that he was up too. I put my hand on my stomach to feel the familiar strangeness of his rolling. Meg's happy voice continued to come through the monitor. "I guess I should go get our little girl," Dave murmured, his eyes still closed.
"No, I'm awake." I said, remembering his long and wearying weekend. "I'll get her." I turned to get out of bed, then changed my mind and leaned back over my husband. "I think we should have pancakes this morning," I whispered.
"Oh, you do?" he replied, sounding vaguely excited even in his snooze-mode.
"Yep." I got up, threw a big, slouchy t-shirt on over my pajamas, and left our bedroom to deliver Meg from her crib.
***
Now, there are plenty of mornings when waking up is much more painful than pleasant, when I don't have a desire to serve my family, when I'm not grateful for all of God's gracious blessings in my life. There are mornings when I am more aware of all that has to be done and the fact that I feel too tired to do it than I am of the grace that is available to me as I walk forward humbly, one step at a time. There are mornings when Meg's voice coming through the monitor is the last thing I want to hear. There are mornings when I think more about how Dave and I both have morning breath than about how much I love my husband.
But yesterday's particular morning was such a sweet, rare, gift of a moment in time that I had to capture it and share it with you. It's my way of giving glory to the God who thought it up and made it so lovely.
2 comments:
I loved reading this! It really hit home for me. I spend more mornings waking up with a grumbling heart rather than an awareness of how blessed I am! But I too, by God's grace,have had those sweet mornings where I look over at my husband and think...God has been so good to me.
Thanks for this :-)
Beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing this wonderfully written piece...it's so helpful to remember God's blessings to us.
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