A Cup of Coffee with God

Every morning I wake up before 5 AM and I have a cup of coffee with God.  No, I don’t set an alarm clock, He wakes me up.  I know, I know. I’m one of those annoying early risers. Where are my early risers? Yeah girl! I’m raising my coffee cup to you right now!  But, had you told me about four years ago that I would get up that early willingly without an alarm, I would have laughed in your face. Where are my girls who are like, “dang, girl, I’d sleep until noon if you let me!”  Regardless of when you wake up, read-on girlfriend, I’ve got some good little nuggets in here for you.

I never feel like I’m dragging and in fact, I get excited to get up and get my morning routine started. I remember when I was twelve and we were going on a trip to Disney World, we had to wake up at 3AM for our flight.  My Dad was so excited that he was up and dancing around (remember the old “stir the pot” move? That’s what he was doing). I kind of feel like that, each morning.

My morning routine looks a little something like this: get up, turn on the coffee, wash my face, put in my contacts, drink some water, then sit down and embrace God’s word with my first delightful sips of goodness in a cup… aaahhh.

I spend over an hour with God every morning, and sometimes I manage to have two cups of hot coffee before anyone else wakes up and the rest of the house starts their day.  You moms know how rare it is to get to drink your coffee hot, right?

What do I do during this time?  I start by closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths, then a big gulp of coffee.  Then I open my journal and begin writing down what I’m grateful for. I found that starting my day with gratitude has changed the course of my days and I’m a huge believer in the Law of Attraction.

I then write down my memory verse for the week.  These are verses that stick out to me from my readings that I jot down and memorize so that I can recall them when I need them.  Sometimes I pick these based on what I think I will need for the week. It’s amazing how sometimes I’ll pick my verse for the week months ahead of time and I’ll get to the week and find that it’s absolutely perfect for what I’m facing in my life at the time.  

Then, I read from my daily devotionals and my Bible Study.  I found that after years of reading daily devotionals that I had barely scratched the surface of all that the Bible contains, so I am also reading the Bible in its entirety by reading 3-4 chapters a day.  

After my daily readings it’s prayer time.  This was a part of my morning routine that has morphed drastically over the years.  After reading Mark Batterson’s The Circle Maker, I changed the way I pray.  I now pray BIG prayers over my family, my boys, my husband, my big goals and dreams and various others.  And do you know what’s crazy? Even though many of these prayers aren’t answered in the timing that I expected, I found that God has granted them to me in HIS timing.  Has that ever happened to you?

It could be mom brain, but I have a horrible memory when it comes to everything I want to pray for every day. I used to write down all of my prayers every morning in a faith planner, but that took FOREVER and I found that I wasn’t praying with much intention.  So now I have all of my prayers written in my journal and I follow the process from St. Paul as he wrote in Philippians 4:6, “…but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” I start by writing out my intention, which is just who or what, specifically I am praying for.  I’ll be honest and say that I had to look up the word “supplication” in the dictionary and found that it means the action of asking or begging for something earnestly and humbly. Well darn if that just isn’t perfect! Then, I make thanksgiving a part of the prayer and thank God as if it has already happened. One more thing I learned from Mark Batterson is to tie it to scripture.  This hyperlinks the prayer straight to God! If you haven’t read any of Mark Batterson’s books yet, go straight to Amazon right now and start with The Circle Maker and Chase the Lion.

After reading Hal Elrod’s book, The Miracle Morning, I added in affirmations to my morning devotion time.  If you want to see how waking up crazy early can positively impact your life, read this book. For real, I know you think I’m crazy, but go read this book and you’ll be up crazy early with me! (Insert eye roll from my wake-up at noon peeps here!)  I read it on a whim on my Kindle when it was in Prime Books, but now you can read his entire series on Kindle Unlimited (I literally just realized that they’re all in Kindle Unlimited so now you know what I’ll be up to later this week – eek!!). In his book, Hal shares how the seven Life SAVERS can change your life – and the A stands for “Affirmations.”  I have his affirmations written in my journal and read them every single morning. And you know what? They have made a difference in how I am doing life! You can check out his free resources here: https://www.miraclemorning.com/bonuses/ including the affirmations I read each day.  You wouldn’t be reading this right now if it weren’t for these affirmations! 

The last part of my morning coffee with God is where I visualize my goals and dreams.  I am a big believer in dream journals and vision boards, so I created a dream journal that has mini vision boards all throughout it so that I can visualize what I want, but I can also write down the steps needed to get there and track my progress.  

Did my days always start like this?  Nope! When I was working full-time I woke up reluctantly every morning to an alarm and rushed to get ready and head out the door.  When my boys were babies I slept every single minute I could because Sean was the world’s worst sleeper.  In fact, my days didn’t start like this until about three years ago.  It started with just a minute of a meditation reading, and grew from there.

But that is a story for another day.  Let’s talk about why we are here and why I have decided to write this blog.

Well, the thing is, I really didn’t have a choice.  God has been telling me over our morning coffee together for quite some time that I need to write several books, and a good friend told me that a blog is a great place to start.  About a year and a half ago I made a little attempt at blogging, but it was mediocre at best and I only ever wrote two posts. I knew in my heart that if I was going to do this, I wanted to do it right.

So here we are.

I won’t pretend that my life is perfect.  And I won’t pretend that I don’t have a past with dark spots.  I won’t pretend to be the perfect wife or the perfect mother.  I won’t pretend to be the perfect Christian or Catholic or person for that matter.  I won’t even pretend that I know what I am doing with writing a blog either because I only really read a couple of blogs.  What I can say is that I am perfectly imperfect.

What you’ll read about here are some lessons that I have learned along the way from my childhood, through college, through what I call my dark times and more recent lessons as well all based around my three main focuses in life: faith, family and purpose.  I hope that you’ll stick with me and be a member of the Anchored with Purpose Tribe because I have so much goodness in store for you!

Psalm 5:3 – “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.”