Grace at 7am
I woke up this morning, inexplicably, at 3:30 a.m. I teetered back and forth between a dream and the reality of early morning before finally tipping into awareness and focussing my eyes. From where I lay nestled in bed, I could see a full moon out the back window. It hung there white and bright like a giant nightlight in the sky lighting up the ridge in distance. I could just make out the upper edge of a long bank of fog hanging low over the golf course.
A sight this spectacular is not to be taken lightly. The universe was nudging me awake for a reason, I assumed, so I flipped on my bedside lamp, grabbed my journal and scribbled for half an hour. Then, realizing I was not going to get back to sleep, I threw back the covers, stuck my feet into slippers and walked to the window. The moon had disappeared into suddenly overcast skies (funny, because a few hours later, the sky was clear, again.) I shuffled downstairs to make coffee figuring that, since I was awake, I might as well work.
I was rewarded for listening to that nudge: four quiet, uninterrupted hours wherein I blasted through a stack of legal work, drafting memos and reviewing precedents. The phone doesn’t ring this early in the morning, nor do any email of importance come in (unless, of course, one of my equally unable to sleep and enterprising clients is also working at 4 am). My cell phone is off and, most important, my kids are safely tucked in bed, asleep, so my maternal radar is operating on low alert.
At 7:00 am, I wandered into the kitchen to open the blinds, and the photo above captures I saw. Well, it doesn’t capture it at all. Pink morning light. Deep green trees against a magical multi-coloured sky. A blanket of fog that would burn off as the sun rose. I stood and stared for a moment, caught off guard by what I was seeing in my own backyard. Then I walked to the door, stepped out onto the deck and took a long deep breath of the chill September air: Grace.
And this: Amen.