Each morning when I wake, in what seems a nanosecond,  my mind is racing with all the tasks and obligations I have for that day.

For quite a long time I’ve tried to find quiet time in the morning (right after I pour my first cup of coffee) for reflection, meditation, readings, and generally shoring myself up for the day by sharing my time with the God I am hoping to grow closer to as the rest of my life happens.

And that’s it.  While I’m trying to keep quiet, meditate, read, pray, reflect (whatever I’m attempting to accomplish on any given morning), I am sometimes interrupted.  I blame my inability to finish what I started, having quiet time of my own to launch my day the way I would like to, on those interruptions.  Unfortunately, though those happen frequently, I’m finding that the number one reason I can’t seem to accomplish what I’ve set out to do – sit quietly in a special place with all my readings around me, in the stillness, pens at short reach for writing notes or simply underlining words I wish to remember and live by, birds chirping out my window reminding me of nature’s wonders, half of the community still asleep while I savor my aloneness – is me.  Yes, I dream of such a perfect setting in which to start my day, in which to reset from yesterday, in which to think, reflect, plan, and pray.  I dream of those mornings, and some of the time I even have one, but not daily as I dream of having. No, not the morning of my dreams.

What pulls me away?  Wandering thoughts of…anything… fly across my mind as I try with every fiber in me to stay calm, quiet, and empty so that I can refill, so that I can reset, so that I can remember what I wish to gain from the morning.  I have gratitudes I wish to express in my journal that I’ve made sure is close by.  I have prayers I want to say before the day gets crazy.  Still, those crazy thoughts, like flies buzzing inside my head, refuse to leave when mentally swatted.

The children are grown, and although we have mornings when grandchildren are waking up here, they aren’t the problem.  We have two dogs, and when they wake (usually early), they pull me away for attention, but even if they weren’t here, I have begun to wonder if the problem is me and all me.

If that’s the case, I have much more work to do and it’s not on anything I listed above.  Oh no, it’s on self-discipline.  First I must work on self-discipline.  What a disappointing conclusion to reach.

The more I sit here and type, the less time I’ll have for all those things I listed, so I’ll stop and see if I can salvage at least a few moments.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll have some success to write about!