They call them the Morning Pages.
It’s a journaling exercise. The instructions? Set aside a specific time first thing in the morning in a quiet and comfortable space where you can write without distractions. Keep your hand moving across the paper—and it must be paper and not a screen. Begin stream of consciousness thoughts and write until you fill three pages. I tried it a few weeks ago and found this scribbling yesterday. Normally, a person would keep these private because it’s only an exercise, and they’re pretty much garbage, but I’m out of time again, and the blog is due. Isn’t it a gift, though, this new Thursday, whether we’re ready for it or not?
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Strolling grassy lifts cover my all, and those tufts protect but aren’t glorious at all, even when we picture them lush and full and magnetic brush piles over our lives of pleasure and fatigue and rest and want, and will God do what He says or won’t He? These are the dreams that last, the green ones full of wonder, and open fields to banter and play and cry and our homes for all to live and love. What lanterns we have and are to spend our time like water in fields. The couch knows it, and so do my bones and flesh and home and heart—my way is Your way, my paths Your paths. The time is new for pasturing along green waters and open prairies for the good of it. Please open the gate to me out to pasture beside quiet waters that know no limits. The time is now to bask and swim and dream and explore the lush green of You, Your safety, and forage the plumbs of your pleasure. This is all to take in the fullness of You and Your ways. The wolves are not far away but harmless. They grow fangs and still keep their distance. Away from them and into the cozy green of the plush life in You, the hard angles, and the dryness of August, and soon it’s October, and the pool closes. Who can count all of it? Why do I wish it away and hold it tight at once? Why do I regret and strive and cling and slap at the “once was” when it won’t be? Cowhide and chairs and now this. You are ALL and in ALL, the ALL, over ALL, through ALL, so what can I do about it? Cling and cry and live. I’m still here, and I have to write three pages total as an exercise in sweeping the mental floor. Move the floor for me, Lord, because this feels odd and self-centered. How can I do that and be okay? Interruptions are the way of it, the guy on the podcast said. He said it in a pretty way—not like that. But I’m sorry I was irritated by interruptions before. I’m sorry I prayed for miraculous healing when I should’ve prayed for redemption. How can it be I get another chance? Another crack at it? I need Thee, oh, I need Thee. Every hour I need Thee. Oh, bless me now, my Savior, I come to Thee. Open the way, the gate, to the pasture so I can come and go and take rest from it. I rob myself of the chance. The opening is there, and I make excuses into it and out of it. Here we go again, and I’m tired of the same-old. The pen lives, I guess, and along with it, my Thursdays. But it’s not about me although it seems so here. Stop the gossip, the noise, the surface BUSY, the endless chatter of shame and regret. I can’t turn the clock back, and what happened from 35 to 55? It’s not fair how fast that went. But only You save. Only You know how it goes and flows or doesn’t. Only You can delight, and I do it too to be like You. Is that suitable? Can it start there, this way of doing things? Can I be okay in the process? My healing is EVER on my mind, my youth. What a heavy weight I’m not to carry. I’m supposed to live, aren’t I? And not worry? Be like sparrows and stalks of wheat and dusty walls and homey sheds and volumes of noise and lengthy talks and fruity jams and holding phones and letting them go?
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