It’s dark and in this unending winter we seem to be trapped by, it’s always cold. He preps the coffee pot before bed so it sputters and spits and finally fills the carafe with discount Folger’s blend that I sweeten and spice and sip under a fleece blanket.
Sometimes I turn on that fake fire and let flames and drink and words warm me from the inside out. There’s Scripture and questions and prayers and me scratching the only pen I could find across crisp sheets of journal paper. There’s settling into this creaky old armchair that’s about to lose its seat springs and reading the earliest morning news and whispering intercessory for the Malaysian flight and the Washington mud and the sorrow that our world seems to drown in sometimes.
There’s blank documents on this computer that balances on my knees while the new eight year old curls into the corner of the couch because she likes to get up early and watch me write though she always falls back asleep and leaves me in my quiet.
There are pages that will never be written and scenes that cannot be edited and posts that are listed on a calendar that will fail because the baby boy has snuggled into the hollow under my chin and he’s so wrapped around my heart that I indulge rocking this baby that my body says is likely the last but my soul knows is preparing me for something more.
It’s my sacred hour.
That early hour when there’s no press to return phone calls or emails or texts or plans. That sliver of quiet that whispers shhhhhh, there’s no place for dishes or laundry or worry here. This is the time for creating and worshiping and bending knees. This is the time for listening.
So I get up in the dark and wait for the muse that comes in ancient words and toddler cries. I fight the battle of no more sleep for me and just thirty more minutes for him. I stir another teaspoon of sugar into my coffee and push back the thoughts that nothing I’m doing really matters. I know in mere moments my thoughts will run to chores and bills and homework and breakfast and playdates and the never ending battle with the laundry. It will be blessedly ordinary and seemingly insignificant.
But sometime already today, maybe only for seconds, I had a moment of sacred.
Quiet. Alone. Listening. Filling.
That will power me through.
Lindsey P. Brackett 