A Sweeter Day

Beep, beep, beep. You reach up a wandering hand, groping for the switch on your alarm. After you've fumbled around for a few seconds you manage to stop that annoying little beeping noise that shatters your fanciful delusions that maybe you won't have to get up for another couple of hours.

You lie on your back in bed, blinking groggily up at the ceiling. As your bleary eyes begin to clear and the world comes into focus you wander why people always put wood-chip paper on the ceiling, right where it will confuse you first thing in the morning. After deciding that you can't stay in bed contemplating the wood-chips all day, you manage to drag yourself out of bed and open the curtains. The sun floods into your room and another day has begun.

Your quiet time has set you straight for the day ahead and you are now free enough of sleep to run downstairs quite briskly. On the other hand, maybe it isn't a wakeful state that is causing your swift progress downstairs, but the thought of a reviving cup of tea. As you sleepily sip your tea at the kitchen table, you decide it must be the tea, not a wakeful state.

Tea was a definite improvement and you begin to sing as you get ready for your shower. The shower produces all you hoped it would - a feeling of being clean and - at last - a feeling of being awake. It has also made you aware of how hungry you are. Breakfast beckons.

You make out your to-do list for the day. Then you decide that it might be a better idea if you went back to bed for a long lie-down. You need it after that. However, there is work to do and you decide that showing some fight and grit might get you farther through your list then crawling back under the covers. Oh well, the bed will still be there at the end of the day - you hope.

As the morning starts to draw to a close, you have an aching wrist after hours of typing 'j, shift-6, period' over and over again. Then over and over again some more. You wouldn't call converting HTML files an interesting task, but at least it gives you time to think. Pressing the same three keys multiple times one after another is not what you would call mentally demanding.

You are starting to feel out of breath as you run around trying to get all your jobs done. Another cup of tea and a brief walk outside help to bring some energy back into your very tired limbs and lift a little of the weight from behind your eyes. You ask yourself why you are quite so tired today.

While wondering how many hours you have left to go you let out two simultaneous groans - one because bed with all its attractions of a cozy read and a good sleep is still a long way off and two because you know you'll never be able to get all you have to get done finished in that time.

As you sit still for a few minutes, thinking how hard it sometimes is to get through a long day using a very tired body, you realize that it isn't just you against the day. God has given you the day as a precious gift and He is walking through it with you. This day holds as many opportunities to make a difference in life as you care to use.

You sit feeling discouraged. All you've been able to do is feel tired, drag your body from one place to another, press computer keys for a couple of hours and stare dizzily at an over-optimistic to-do list.

What you don't remember is the kind word you said to your sister, the note you sent to a friend who was having a hard day, the song you were singing to God this morning, the package you sent to a friend, the time you took to make a card for a stressed-out family. Maybe none of those things were on your to-do list and maybe you can't cross them off with a feeling of accomplishment, but when you finally get to lie your tied head on your pillow, you will have left the day a better and sweeter one then when you first switched off your alarm this morning.