Night Owl

I am definitely a night owl.  I love the quiet of night.  Having four kids, there is always someone talking to me about something, and of course then I have to respond.  I have no problems talking with my kids, but by the end of the day I'm ready to sit in the quiet and be quiet.  And I love to piddle around in the quiet.  There's always something fun to do here - knitting, a little housework, spending time with my husband, answering email, writing blog entries..... ;-)  Sometimes I don't get into bed until midnight.  eeeek!  Our 12-month old usually wakes up around seven, and if I sleep until then, I might as well kiss a morning quiet time goodbye.  So lately I've been wrestling with myself over my late night habits.  I've always wanted to be an early bird and ALMOST convinced myself that "I am what I yam"  until I got the latest "Dad's and Mom's Corners" from Steve and Terri Maxwell.  God bless them.  And especially God bless Terri for the article she wrote this month.  Guess what it was about????????? 

Here are a few paragraphs from her article that jumped out at me and hit me between the eyes:

"The mom who isn't disciplined to get up in the morning before the children is educating her children in her ways without purposing to do so. This mom will then face an ongoing, discouraging battle to try to get her children out of bed in the mornings to eat breakfast, do their chores, and start school because they are following her example." (oh my.  Has she been a fly on my wall???)

"How does one go from a night owl to a morning lark? I would expect that many more moms would consider themselves to be night owls than to be morning larks by nature. We have allowed ourselves to become those night owls by our personal habits. The starting place, I believe, is to admit that being a night owl is a choice and that we are only making excuses when we say it is the way we are naturally, especially if the implication is that we can't change. We might even go so far as to define it as sin if the Lord has been calling us to get up earlier in the morning, but we are still choosing to stay up at night."(It IS a choice!  I have done that myself.  It was easier to make the bad choice, and yet I've been stressing over a lack of time to do all I need to do in the morning - shooting myself in the foot!  What a goober! ;-)

So much to work on to become the mom I want to be.  Terri quoted 2 Corinthians 12:9.  "And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness."  God's grace and strength is really the only way that I can bend my will to His.  It's all so much bigger than me, and I almost feel overwhelmed at how big God is, yet at the same time, comforted.  I can give the issue to Him every day until He has changed my heart.