What Gets You Out of Bed in the Morning?
By Allison Magera
No matter how hard I’ve tried, I’m not an early morning person. My family has always been the type to wake up before dawn, have entire conversations about their plans for the day before they get to work, and be out the door by the time the sun comes up. (If this is you too, much respect.) Until college, I didn’t really have an option but to be the same way. As a little girl I remember being so proud when I picked out an alarm clock at Walmart one day so I could wake myself up to catch the 6:25 bus every morning. Until I graduated high school, I woke up before dawn along with the rest of my family day after day after day.
The Struggle to Get Up in the Morning
But in college, I began to notice that mornings were no longer as simple as pressing snooze a couple times and then bouncing out of bed with no spare time before my first class. I now had several hours each morning before even needing to get ready for class, and a whole lot of heartache filled that spare time. A combination of losing touch with old friends from home, a recent breakup, an absent roommate, and withdrawing from a new group of friends that wasn’t right for me led to isolation and a piercing loneliness that I had never experienced before. What’s more, a bout of insomnia and some spiritual desolation only amplified my feelings of loneliness.
It was in the tender time of just waking up that I most strongly felt the weight of grieving the loss of so many relationships at once. This weight was overwhelming at times, and it often made getting out of bed the hardest part of the day. Contemplating rolling back over and giving in to the heaviness of my emotions or getting up to start a new day became a daily mental battle.
I admittedly lost that battle many times before successfully getting out of bed. I would often submit to needlessly running through all the “what ifs” racing through my mind or surrender to a despair and hopelessness that fed me the false belief that I would feel the same way forever. Fighting against these mental narratives every morning was a battle that required a force much greater than myself—God’s grace.
God’s Grace in Action
Although I may not have felt close to God during those difficult days, I did experience His grace in the form of being able to look forward to simple things each day: the refreshment I’d feel from sipping my morning coffee, the confidence born of wearing a new shirt, a friendship formed from sitting next to someone at Mass. His grace also allowed me to grow in virtue: I developed perseverance from continuing to show up to a tough class and trust in my identity as a daughter of God with each glance at the crucifix. These are all examples of gifts that God gave me on days I thought my grief would overtake me. These gifts allowed me the strength to win the mental battle––to get out of bed and begin the day––and reminded me that, even when my awareness of His presence was clouded, He was very close.
A Perspective-Changing Poem
Another practical thing that God has given me is the work of Father Pedro Arrupe. A Spanish priest who greatly reformed the Jesuits, Father Arrupe wrote a poem which has helped me form a new appreciation for God:
Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.
A particularly striking aspect of this poem is the way Father Arrupe describes how what we are in love with determines what will get us out of bed in the mornings. I found this to be true. What was getting me out of bed on my hardest days was not a nice sentiment that I would repeat in my mind or an act of sheer willpower, but God Himself, inviting me to receive His love through the tangible things of life.
His love for me, and mine for Him, was what was getting me out of bed on those difficult mornings.
All of us may, at some point, have trouble getting up in the mornings. We may face the mental battle between giving in to grief or despair and saying yes to receiving God’s daily gifts for us. Winning that battle is challenging some days, but recognizing His gifts for us is where we find Him––even when He feels far from us. May this recognition of the personal way God loves us allow us to fall more deeply in love with Him. My hope is that getting out of bed in the mornings becomes an act of gratitude for each of us.
Though our own grief can often feel anything but practical, falling in love with God always is.
