Brenda Rodgers

Category: Faith

  • Benefits of Becoming a Morning Person

    Right now you are in one of two places. Either the thought of becoming a morning person seems as impossible as becoming a world-class athlete or you’ve tried to become a morning person and your days are filled with so much tired haze that you can’t even see clearly enough to remember why you got up early in the first place!

    Remember . . .

    “No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.” Hebrews 12:11

    Let’s keep our eye on the peaceful harvest!

    There is one general benefit of getting up early no matter what your goal is for doing so. That is productivity in something you want to accomplish, but most likely wouldn’t get to during the day.

    However, I am going to talk about the benefits of being a morning person based on my two goals:
    Time with God and Exercise

    1. My relationship with God is stronger.

    • Surrender

    When I give God the first fruits of my day (Exodus 23:19, Job 1:5) I am able to lay everything out of the table for Him – my blessings, my family, my fears, my worries – and acknowledge that He is the God of the universe, and He is in control. The day I am about to go into is bigger than myself, it has been preordained, and I am His disciple, not the savior.

    • Peace

    Through surrendering my day to God, I am able to experience His peace. Throughout the day when things get hectic and tense and relationally out-of-control I have my morning to fall back on and remember that He is the same God He was a few hours prior.

    • Wisdom

    The more truth from God’s Word that I put into my brain, the less yuck from the outside stays in, and I gain understanding and wisdom about who God truly is. Building up a storehouse of God’s thoughts in my mind is definitely a slow process, but I have seen the benefits when I am able to recall something I read in scripture at the very moment I need it to help me.

    • Friendship

    In these quiet moments of prayer and scripture reading God becomes a person. He becomes a friend, and I experience Jesus. This is how I have come to know Jesus a person whom I have a relationship with – not just an abstract god whom I have no connection to. This is also how I experience the Cross. God shows Himself to me in these tiny, quiet moments and I am reminded that He is for me, not against me (Romans 8:31).

    2. I am healthier.

    • Physically

    Exercise obviously makes us healthier. But getting up early to exercise gives me energy for the rest of the day. It’s the lighter fluid that gets the my fire burning to accomplish all the tasks for the day!

    • Emotionally

    One time I told my primary care doctor that I just didn’t feel happy. I felt depressed. The first thing out of her mouth was “exercise”. This is the body’s escape!

    • Spiritually

    Yes, spiritually. Exercise reminds me of all that I am blessed with – a heart, lungs, legs, even toes. It reminds me that I am a steward of the body God gave me, and He wants me to use it for His glory and be grateful for it (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). The best way for me to do this is to not take it for granted, but use it for what it is capable of doing.

    Photo Credit:  Creative Commons

    How could you benefit from becoming a morning person?

  • How I Became a Morning Person

    It’s hardest in the winter when just one elbow peaks out from under comforter and a ripple of shivers move throughout my body. And it’s even harder when my eyes open for the first time and the air is still as black as it was when I closed them. For a long time I would justify this by saying that we really weren’t made to get up before the sun comes up.
    As my life got more hectic, though, with work, social, ministry, and then a husband, it became almost impossible to accomplish all that I wanted to do in a day, and it seemed that the two most essential, but not pertinent, tasks were the first to go – time with God and exercise. Wise people have said that people find time to do whatever is important to them. Wise people have also said that something doesn’t become important until it becomes a problem. My goal was to make time with God and exercise important BEFORE they became problems.
    I realized that if I was going to accomplish these two tasks every day, I had to do them before the expectations of everyone else began. And that means I had to get up early, really early.

    At the time I had to be at work by 7:20. It takes me longer than most people (blushingly) to get dressed in the morning. (I just don’t like to be rushed, right?) So, if I was going to pray, read by Bible, AND exercise I had to get up at 4:00 AM. 4:00 AM?? Yes, 4:00 AM, and believe it or not it became easier to do than you think! Now that I work from home I am blessed with sleeping one hour later, so these day I get up at 5:00.

    I know this seems impossible at the moment, but trust me, you can do this, too, and the benefits (which I will address tomorrow) absolutely outweigh the few sacrifices!

    1. Decide on your goals.

    What do you want to get up early to do? Why do you want to get up early to accomplish these tasks? What are the benefits? I stated my goals above, but anything that you are passionate about accomplishing, but can’t seem to find the time to do during the day, can be your goal. (I do hope one of them is time with God because this one fuels productivity for the rest of the day.)

    2. Pray for discipline.

    It obviously takes discipline to get up earlier than you’re used to, and it also takes discipline to then do what you planned on doing after you get up. Discipline sometimes seems like a bad word, and of course we really, really dislike it, but in the Bible it says that after discipline there will be a “peaceful harvest of right living” (Hebrews 12:11 NLT)  Isn’t that what we’re seeking – peace from living the way we are shown is right? 

    3. Get a wake-up buddy.

    There was one time in my life when I paired up with a friend in my Bible study, and we decided to help each other with this by making a quick phone call to each other when we got up. We didn’t start talking.  We just told each other to have a good day and quickly got off the phone.

    4. Go to bed early.

    This one goes back to discipline. You will have to go to bed early or you will quickly find that either you won’t get up the next morning or you’ll be miserable the rest of the day. When I got up at 4:00 I tried to be in bed by 9:00 the night before. 

    5. Wake up early on the weekends.

    Now, I do not wake up at 5:00 on the weekends, but I do wake up earlier than I would normally. You will find that over time your body will naturally adjust to your new schedule, and it will become almost impossible to sleep late. On the weekends I do not set my clock (not even to get up to go to church on Sunday) because I naturally wake up at the very latest by 7:00, but most of the time around 6:00. For a while it might be a good idea to set a clock for about 7:00 just so you don’t have to completely start over on conditioning your body each week.

    Here are also some helpful Bible verses that address getting up early:
    * Mark 1:35
    * Luke 4:42
    * Psalm 5:3
    * Psalm 118:24
    * Psalm 127:2
    * Proverbs 31:15

    Photo Credit: Creative Commons

    Do you want to become a morning person to reach your goals?  What is the hardest thing about getting up early for you? 

  • My Shiny New Shoes

    Join me today for 5 Minute Friday with The Gypsy Mama where we write for five minutes on a given topic. No editing. No criticism. No worry. Today’s topic is: New
     

    I slid my feet in one at a time – into those polished, shiny new shoes, and my countenance became shiny, too.  So I walked around standing high and tall.  Those polished, shiny shoes made me new.

    My head got too heavy as I held it up high, so there it fell. I leaned forward, and trip, trip, trip my polished, shiny, new shoes splashed in a puddle now stained with the look of old.

    Now if only I get a new pair of polished, shiny shoes will all of these troubles fade away?

    So off I prance on my toes holding my stained, muddy, old shoes in my hand.  Off to find the next pair to make me new again.
    Photo Credit: Creative Commons

  • Chronic Illness Gave Us New Lenses

    There are experiences in life that when you are going through them all you dream about is escape. Everything on the outside of your small window seems idyllic and tranquil and unfair. You wonder how you got stuck behind the closed doors and why everyone else gets to stay out.

    Then as time passes, and the small window cracks, you feel some of the fresh air coming in from the outside, and with it comes a new perspective. As the window opens even further you begin to forget the agony from the inside, and the time shut-in doesn’t seem so bad. You find yourself, after finally stepping outside and perusing around a while, asking, “If I could choose so, would I do it all over again?”

     My answer is that I don’t want to do it over again, but I still want the new lens that the experience gave me. I want the blessing without the reliance.

     For months the reality of death was very real to us. It became a part of our daily conversations. It became a part of our thoughts. It became a part of our plans. After feeling the rawness of mortality everything around you begins to look different and much less significant.

     This was our blessing. This was the prize of hope and a future that God gave us at the end of the day (Jeremiah 29:11). He gave us another lens to look through. A lens that reminds us:
    • Everything we see is temporary. (2 Corinthians 4:18)
    • We have eternity to look forward to. (John 14:1-4)
    • We are here to bring people to Jesus. (Matthew 28:19-20)

    However, even now John and I don’t always use this new lens. As the days separate us further from our experience, we often forget about the new lens we received, and we go back to using those same old lenses that display our rights, our needs, ourselves, instead of each other.

    The days we do, though, we are able to imagine the possibility of doing it all over again. We have a gift that is hard to receive without meeting Jesus in a place where all there is left is reliance on Him.

    Photo Credit: Creative Commons

  • Chronic Illness and the Shift from Motherhood

    It had been over a month since my husband and I were in our house. Our new home had become a sterile room with a roll away bed, one pull out chair, and a constant beeping sound from carts with bags of medicine hanging from them. Around that time we heard the first utterance of what we imagined day in and day out, but sometimes still couldn’t believe was ever going to happen. The doctors told us we were almost ready. We were getting close to walking out the doors and onto the rest of our lives.

    Those words brought me ecstatic joy, but I also knew that the hard work of rebuilding our marriage would also begin.

    About a year before going into the hospital, John’s and my relationship began shifting from a typical, healthy, newlywed marriage of depending and helping each other to one where I took care of him every day – preparing meals and bringing them to him, helping him get dressed and prepared for the day, making phone calls about prescriptions and insurance, and consulting with teams of doctors on what treatment was next. One weekend I had to travel to Georgia for a wedding, and my dad had to come up to stay with him.  Overnight trips to visit family and friends became no longer possible, and my errands had to be run quickly.

    Our relationship shifted from husband and wife to child and mother. This is not what any young, strong man who desires more than anything to be seen as such wants in his life. He wanted to take care of me. But he couldn’t.

    As we moved back into our house and John got stronger, our roles would have to go back to the way they were supposed to be.  Otherwise our marriage would never be what it was meant to be.  I would have to learn to let go of the child needing a caretaker and let John return once again to the strong man he had always been on the inside.

    The rebuilding was not easy.

    Maybe it was partly because our marriage was so new to begin with, but it was as if when we walked through our front door we were walking in for the first time as a married couple. We had to relearn marriage. We had to relearn our roles. We had to relearn what we were both good at doing. We had to relearn communication.

    And I had to relearn how to submit.  It was time for me to let go and allow John the freedom he needed to heal – not only physically, but emotionally and even spiritually. 

    It took time and even some arguments, discussions, and then more discussions, but through the rebuilding John transformed into a husband again. And I transformed into a wife.

  • Chronic Illness Made Me a Helper

    Back in those days, when my husband’s heart could hardly hold him up, I would get home from teaching all day and my night job would begin.  It was a night job I did not sign up for or expect or want.  But it was one that brought me to my true purpose – to be a helper (Genesis 2:18).

    I quickly learned how to do the big jobs like mow the grass, get on ladders, and move heavy things because there was no one else to do it.  However, it was the small jobs that made me miss my husband even more.  No longer could he take out the trash or grill his famous steaks outside.  No longer could he sleep close to me at night. 

    After getting home and finishing my night jobs, then the rest of the night began.  It always started with John laying in my lap.  He was so sick and frail with an IV medication as a constant reminder of how sick he really was.  Later when it was time to go to bed he went to his new bed – the recliner.  No longer could he make the trip upstairs, and no longer could he sleep flat.  He couldn’t breathe that way.  So I would take my place on my new bed – the sofa nearby – so that I hear him breathe – or not breathe.  Of course sleep was something neither one of us got often back then.  If we weren’t awake from not feeling well, then we were awake from fear. 

    There were times when I found myself getting resentful.  It was like taking care of a child, except that he wasn’t a child.  He was my husband.  He was supposed to be taking care of me.  Not knowing how it really felt to be sick with Cardiomyopathy I would rationalize that he could do more.  For the longest time John hid the extent of his sickness from me.  He pressed on, kept working, to protect me.  I didn’t understand why it seemed that “all of a sudden” he couldn’t do things he used to do.  Many nights I went to bed in tears.  The days became one like a tunnel where I could see the light at the end, but the outside was blurry – a blurr that seemed to never clear.  I told my friends I could not do it another day.

    Those were the moments that I remembered my choice.  We did not have a choice of whether or not to go through this experience so early in our marriage, but I did have a choice of how I would respond to it.   

    I chose to become a helper.  I picked up my cross (Matthew 16:24-25), and I surrendered.  My only purpose became to serve my husband.  Everything else – my job, our house, my wants, my desires – became second or third or fourth.