Facing Fears

9 years ago I took a leap and faced a fear.

Eric heard me sing for the first time. I stepped out on a stage, in a situation completely out of my comfort zone. We sang 'He Knows' together for the first time. It was so scary. I was nervous to the point of shaking. And yet, as soon as I stepped out on the promise of God's help, my shaking stoped and I was at peace.

9 years ago because I faced a fear, God has taken me to places and through experiences I never knew I would love. As a result of that of that one choice, my whole world changed and I have been able to witness Christ at work. And we’ve sung ‘He Knows’ over 500 times… 

Ever since I was a little girl I've always held onto the promise in Matthew 28:20b "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age”. It's encouraged me and given me peace innumerable times. As I’ve become older, the promise is becoming more and more important. 

Ezra went to his first swimming lesson last week. Ezra's had a bit of a love hate relationship with water and the first 23 minutes of the lesson definitely showed it. His hands were tightly clutching my swimmers, his favourite things to say were "door" and "finish", and he might have cried a time or two. But we stayed at the side, just in the water until he was ready to go deeper.

Then he saw the other kids jump into the pool. And it was on! He smiled and said "I need". From there he then jumped in the water about 15 times! He loved it so much he didn't want to leave. So proud of how brave he was! I love seeing the resilience and bravery of little people. And we found it hilarious that just sitting in the water was too scary, but jumping into the water was ok. We're so proud of our little guy. Love it!

Is there a moment when you have faced a fear and took a leap?

Why I wake up at 5 AM...

How to Become a "Morning Person”

For my whole life mornings have just not been my thing. I've been known to easily sleep in to midday or even 1pm without breaking a sweat. Eric, when we first got married, has admitted to coming quietly up to my sleeping body to check I was still alive! When I was a teacher I felt like I was sleep walking until the first bell rang and one of my office mates once called me a Koala. 

Sleeping. It's my thing. 

I adore it! 

But along came Music Ministry... Where I had to wake up even earlier than teaching! It was horrendous! Then came the pregnancy and the baby! Agh! It's like my life declared an all out war against my ability to sleep in. 

But like anything difficult, you just got find a way to survive.... and hopefully thrive (jokes! waking up early will never be thriving in my book). So okay, this is still a work in progress.

I still definitely struggle waking up, as Eric can attest to. But there are certain ideas that I have implemented into my life that have helped this transition.

#1 Have a baby! 

Have a baby and you'll simply have choice to become an all-hours-of-the-morning person. (Jokes! No, seriously, I have no choice now...)

#2 Maximise Sleep Time

It all starts the night before. If I'm getting up really, really early I try to prep as much as possible the night before. That a means getting my clothes ready the day before, my bag packed, and having an idea on what to eat for breakfast. Also, we try to set a time to a time to shut off, calm down and get ready for bed. All of this can be helpful to make it easier to get up in the morning, and let's face it, try to maximise sleeping time! 

#3 Create excitement to wake up to

Creating an exciting, interesting routine. This is not something I'm too good at following all the time. I can get into a really great run of routine driven mornings and then a music ministry weekend pops up and I just don't want to wake up that little bit earlier to do the whole routine. BUT, that said, the routine that seems to help me the most in the mornings involve: Lemon water, breakfast, devotional, hot drink, exercise and getting ready for the day. With a baby this seems to stretch out sometimes, like this morning where I only finished it at 10:30am! Or some of the items drop off. So this isn't really exciting, but with all of these elements combined I feel most ready for a day, especially seeing that unless we're on tour we work from home. And with that in mind... 

#4 Have a shower and get ready

One of my most relaxing things to do is to just hang out in my PJs all day long. So, that means that if I want to be a 'morning person' it's imperative for me to shake off the sleep by actually getting ready with a shower. I've found this so important seeing that we work in our office from home. Getting ready for the day, not in track pants and a hoodie... though there's nothing wrong with that... helps to put my mind in the right place. This was something that I even made sure I did when we first had baby Ezra. It helped me to be able to deal with the major sleep deprivation by waking up with a refreshing shower each morning. 

#5 If all else fails... fake it till you make it. 

Because let's face it. I'm not a morning person and I'm not sure if I ever will be. But I sure do know how to act awake and happy even if all I want to do is crawl back in bed until a reasonable hour of the morning.