I am not the best at waking up. I do it every morning, don’t get me wrong, but it is a struggle. It doesn’t really matter how early or late I go to bed, waking up is hard.

I’ve never been especially good at rising early. By early I mean before 7. I’ve tried every gimmick in the book; all to no avail. I’ve tried going to bed earlier. I’ve tried setting my alarm for an earlier time so I can play the snooze game before getting up. I’ve tried praying God would wake up when I needed to get up.

Not to say prayer didn’t work; maybe God thought I needed to sleep in, but none of the things I tried worked.

Which is why it was so strange to wake up at 5 this morning.  I laid in bed trying in vain to go back to sleep for about 45 minutes. Most people when they wake up in the wee hours will get out of bed and eat, not me. I get out of bed to visit the “necessary room” because I am usually convinced my bladder woke me up.

That didn’t work this morning. I returned to bed and hopefully to sleep. Nope. I laid there for another hour. (An HOUR!) Before I gave up and prayed, “Lord, You woke me up and I can’t go back to sleep, what do You want me to do?”

Imagine my shock when almost immediately I “heard” the following response:

Get up and make coffee.

I shook my head in questions, “Get up and make coffee? Really? Then what?”

Get up and make coffee.

Over and over for a few minutes. So I got up and made the coffee.  I poured myself a cup and sleepily found my way to my favorite chair with my nook in hand. I started reading on facebook, while I sipped my coffee, still utterly confused as to why I had to get up so early just to make coffee. I felt God say:

I didn’t say read facebook.

Whoops. I opened YouVersion and began reading today’s reading in the plan I’m following.

And I felt God smile.

He had verses jump off the page at me like never before.  I sipped my coffee while my eyes followed the words on the page.

My spirit was restored.