10 Jan Today I Woke Up

Every night at our dinner table, each member of our family shares their highlights (or lowlights, as we call the hard moments) of their day. Many times, these highlights are predictable, but always they are valuable and we treasure hearing them.

My nine year old daughter, Chesed, has a “highlight template.” Her siblings regularly joke with her about the fact that every single night, she begins her highlights the exact same way: “Well, today I woke up...”

After being regularly harassed by her siblings about this, my husband said, “Chesed, tell your siblings why you always include waking up in your highlights.” And my sweet nine year old spoke strongly and with passion: “I’m so glad that I’m alive every day. You know, at night some people go to sleep and they don’t wake up the next morning.”

Well, all the tears were coming to my eyes at that word. How our kids regularly minister to us astounds and convicts me. “Yes, Lord. Thank you that today I woke up!”

Each new day when my eyes open to the light of the dawn, there is great purpose for me. As long as God has given me breath in my lungs and blood pumping through my veins, there are reasons to rejoice.

My friend Dustin came over yesterday and as we exchanged New Years’ greetings I joked with him that I feel like I should have some super-awesome “New Decade” resolutions – you know, ten times the strength of normal New Years resolutions.

We laughed as we both know how silly this idea is, but I thought to myself late at night while lying in the darkness of my room, listening to my husband breathing deeply beside me, “Maybe the more radical resolution is to just do what Chesed does every single day – to take deep delight in life itself.”

And as a friend texted to tell me the devastating news that her mother is in the ICU and it doesn’t look good, the truth sunk in more deeply – Life: it is to be cherished. Every single moment.

Life – with its pains and difficulties, trials and joys. Life – with its monotony and disappointments, rushes of excitement and moments of brilliant success. All a gift, all a joy, all working together for something deeply wonderful and eternally significant through Christ.

Our world screams at us from all angles to do more, be more, and achieve more in order to prove that we can be a newer, better version of ourselves each year. But maybe the harder, better move to make is choosing to sit still with your own soul and rejoice in the life you have already been given.

What if January became for us not a time to strive to re-create ourselves into the version of ourselves we’d like to be and instead became an opportunity to freshly commit ourselves to our Creator and yield to His hands as He lovingly works His character in our hearts?

When you come to the end of 2020, what do you hope your highlights will be?

I’m taking a cue from my daughter and starting simple: “Dear God, thank you that today you allowed me to wake up. Thank you for giving me the gift of this new day. Help me to live it with you and for you, with others and for others, with purpose and on purpose for your glory alone. I love you.“