Some of the delay had to due with the fear of getting started. Those old fears that we all face. The ones that tell us we aren't hearing the Lord correctly. The ones that convince us that we aren't enough. Those lies that tell us that it won't even be worth it. God was patient with me in the midst of my fears. He walked with me as we worked through each of those fears and lies.
I finally faced my fears and reached out to my prayer warriors to lift me up as I was writing. I started gaining traction but it wasn't going as quickly as I would like. I kept running in to one particular roadblock, the heat of the day.
I would start each morning with the best of intentions. I would get up in the morning with a plan to work, make dinner, and then write later in the evening. My work day would start and I would find myself putting out fire after fire. A lot of my co-workers live in Arizona. They come on later in the day and I would find myself working with them well into the evening. I would suddenly realize what time it was and would jump off the computer to try to get dinner on the table. Most of the time, after sitting at my desk for 9 or 10 hours, the last thing I wanted to do was go back and sit in the office to write my book. I would convince myself that tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow, I would make myself get off on time and then I would write. Invariably, tomorrow would come and the day would get away from me once again.
I was so frustrated at not making any progress. Then I read the devotional for day one in Priscilla Schirer's new 90 day devotional called Awaken. It's called Morning. She was talking about how the heat of the day's trials can melt us in our tracks. It causes our strength and our resolve to disappear. She compared our energy to the manna that God provided the Israelites. They knew that they had to make the gathering of manna a priority in the morning before the sun melted it away. If they faithfully gathered the manna first thing in the morning, they would have all that they needed to meet the day's needs. If they didn't, they would struggle to survive the day and would have to wait until the next morning to get their daily bread.
This illustration made me realize that my priorities were wrong. If I put my quiet time with God and my writing at the end of the day, the heat of the day would melt away all of my energy. God and the things He has specifically asked me to do, needed to be a priority. So now, I start my morning with my quiet time and then I set aside an hour for writing. This allows me to do the things that matter most. It has also made the writing easier as my mind is renewed and refreshed first thing in the morning.
Changing the structure of my day has not only changed the speed of my work on my book. It has changed the amount of peace that I have throughout my day. I'm no longer dealing with feeling bad at the end of the day for not accomplishing what I had set out to do. I end the day feeling proud that I've worked towards my goals. My dear friend Jeanne has been preaching about a morning quiet time for as long as I can remember and seeing it compared to manna helped me to see why.
Is there something in your life that should be getting the priority of your morning? Would life be a little easier if you re-aligned some things? It's definitely worth looking into.
