Lately, our mornings have been getting out of hand. I crawl
out of bed on the third snooze, pull on as many clothes as I can manage (my
husband waits for the fourth snooze to get up and build fires in the
woodstoves that heat our house) and put a pot of oatmeal on the stove for the kids. I then begin
the CHORE of waking them all up. In the process, I am many times growled at and
threatened. Trying not to take it personally (they’re teenagers), I generally
throw in a load of laundry, locate my sneakers and my contacts and head out for
a run. Then while running, I worry that one of them didn’t get up and I’ll
return not only to a kitchen with oatmeal dripping down the stove and dishes
abandoned on the table, but a child still snoozing oblivious to the beginning
of another glorious day.
As I clean up the debris left from three obvious dashes out
the door in my absence, I lament that our mornings have come to this. I
fret that my middle child will find it hard to concentrate, once again having
left without time to make lunch. I worry that the fact that no one brushed
their teeth this morning (or any morning of late) means they will all end up
with cavities and bad breath. I sigh when I find homework (due today!) abandoned on the kitchen table next to the jar of raisins. After that, I move on to berating myself for
allowing my children to become such slobs in the first place and me for being so selfish that I leave for a run without making sure they are ready for their day.
One morning this week, as I turned yet another lap at the park
(I couldn’t run my normal route due to the gauntlet of hunters dotting the
trees surrounding our roads -it's hunting season in York County this week), I decided that it
was time for a change. Our mornings need to be more intentional (to borrow a
phrase from a soon-to-be bestselling book).
