Hello mornings

This week I’ve been reading the amazing book Hello Mornings: How To Build A Grace-Filled, Life-Giving Morning Routine by Kat Lee, which you can find at Amazon here.

It’s about a simple, three-minute morning routine to help you build a daily, life-long, Jesus-centered habit to anchor you for every season of your life.

Now if you’re like me, you are so not a morning person, and you don’t exactly jump out of bed in the morning with glee.

In fact, let’s just be real here. Cheerful morning people can be irritating (and especially chatty ones)! The Bible even backs me up on this (sorta’!) in Proverbs 27:14, NASB:

“He who blesses his friend with a loud voice early in the morning, It will be reckoned a curse to him.”

But we can start our day differently (including our attitude!) with these 3 small, simple steps. Kat says, “Each morning can then become a launch pad into God’s amazing plan for your life!”

Here is the routine Kat introduces in this book that anyone can do:

The Three-Minute Morning:

1.Read/memorize/pray Psalm 143:8.

2. Look at your calendar for today.

3. Drink a glass of water.

That’s it!  Totally doable. Simple. Not hard!

She writes, “There you go. That will change your life. There’s nothing magical about each step, yet each one is crucial. Feel boxed in by how specific it is? You can change it up…”.

She said at first, she started it small, and at times it was messy or she was lazy, falling back asleep. But she kept on until it became a daily habit, then she wrote a blog about it, then a group challenge called Hello Mornings with thousands of women joining it.

Finally, to her surprise Kat was invited by the director of the child sponsorship program Compassion to go on one of their trips to the Philippines, the country where her mother was born (who had died nine months after Kat was born. Compassion’s director Shawn Groves did not know this when he invited Kat, but God did!).

When arriving to the Philippines, Kat not only met the child her family had sponsored through Compassion for years, but a group of people was waiting for her at the hotel-the family that she’d never met! She was surrounded by women who looked like her–her mother’s sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews. Not only Kat and her family were in tears, but Shaun and the Compassion team were, too (“all ugly crying right along with me,” she writes).

As Kat says, oh, how God redeems! And it all started with 3 simple steps in the morning for her! Just think what God can do for you!

Kat writes, “Taking the time to sit and savor all the possibility wrapped up in the next twenty-four hours is refreshing, inspiring, and invigorating. The One who, with a simple whisper to your heart, can make all right with the world, waits ever so patiently for you each morning. He knows you. He wants you. He remembers your biggest dreams, your secret hopes, and your desperate prayers…He is my greatest gift, the source of my hope and security. With Him, every single day, all things are possible.”

If you already have a morning routine, you can add this. And you don’t have to stop there.

Kat (I love her name!) encourages you to start small with these three steps, then dives into how to cultivate these daily, continuous habits of God, Plan, Move into a well-lived, successful life of faith and purpose. She includes delicious things like having a woven basket for your materials like your Bible and a notebook and a cup of joe (or hot tea), journaling Scriptures with fun, colorful pens, and doing stretches first thing or getting a FitBit to count your steps during the day.

Kat writes about the importance of preparation of a “morning kit” for your morning routine with God. “I like to think of it like having a guest, except the guest is my tired, grumpy morning self. I prepare candles, coffee, a cozy corner, and all the little accoutrements of an inspiring morning time.  Few things make waking up early more fun than having a little nook all set up, ready, and waiting for me to snuggle down and let God fill me up so I can live the day for Him. If we put in the preparation beforehand, when the alarm goes off, the rest will be easy.” (pp. 164-165)

I share about my own routine in my book, Coffee With God, available at Amazon here. My own nook is our front entry room, where I have my Bible, journal, Sharpie extra-fine, black pens, coffee (recently I bought Cacoa Bliss to add to the coffee. It is so yummy and chock full of healthy ingredients, USDA organic, and gluten free–and you can drink chocolate without feeling guilty! I also keep a basket and a stack of good books on the little table besides the couch, from which to choose daily readings like Hello Mornings.

What I love about this 3 Minute Morning is that I know I can do this. I can wake up (eventually, if I have had insomnia the night before!). I can say a short prayer to God, thanking Him for a new day to serve Him. I can eat just a bite, like 1/2 a grapefruit, fruit and yogurt, or an egg. Then I start the red Keurig coffee pot (I add the Cacao Bliss and lots of creamer to mine!). This is my “coffee with God” time and one of the fave parts of my day.

Yesterday I implemented the “Move” part in Kat’s God, Plan, Move routine by cleaning the whole house. Today I worked in my little flower gardens, weeding. Can I just say weeding is hard work, especially if it’s been awhile since you did it?

Weeds are to flowers what sin is to our hearts. It is hard work rooting out these things, but with God’s help we can do it. Today I saw that the Creeping Charlie weed (also called ground ivy) was growing worse in our yard. It is a hard to kill lawn weed.  Even if you dig it out, its rhizomes are so invasive that leaving behind just one fragment can result in a new plant. This weed can take over your entire garden and yard, as sin can take over our lives.

I encourage you (and myself) to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal anything that is a hindrance to your intimacy with God. Repent and ask His forgiveness and for God to cleanse you of this sin. He will show you if there’s anything there, and He won’t overwhelm you with all your sins at once.

Well, I’m not finished reading this book yet. But Kat encourages her readers to ask God, “Are the things filling my day the things You want to fill my day?” To align the rest of our day with God’s heart.

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Do you already have a morning routine? How does this 3 Minute Morning Routine sound to you? Share in the comments below. 

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