How I Start My Morning with Joy and Energy
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| This pictures gives me joy so using it. 🙂 We love taking silly pictures with our kids. |
It is so good to feel good on a Monday morning. There can be Mondays where I start my week already feeling defeated and overwhelmed. A few weeks ago on a Monday I felt so heavy and weary. I could just mostly cry. So my Mondays are not always magical 😉 but trying to find ways to bring joy.
It is easy to dread Mondays because of all the unfinished work that they can represent.
My sweet 7 year old daughter is currently in a season where school is very hard for her. Last Monday I ended up just keeping her home because she bawled for an hour before school. Mondays are especially hard for her because she has been home for a few days and does not want to go back. It is a good thing that she loves home and her family so much that she wants to stay. But I send her to school because we think her charter school will offer her more opportunities than I could offer.
So we are trying to find ways that we can make Mondays better. We want Mondays to be a day that my kids look forward to. Jeremy had the brilliant idea to take them to Panera for their favorite cinnamon crunch bagels.
But one way that we bring joy and energy into our home in the mornings is through the power of praise music. I have a favorite Pandora channel, Lauren Daigle. It plays more than just her stuff. The channel begins to learn what we like when we like or dislike songs.
It lifts my spirit like nothing else can. One of my favorite parts of coming together as a church is the worship as a community. Music has the power to connect our hearts to God like few other things.
I have found that I can have that same powerful experience in my living room or my minivan/car. I am actually finding that it is even more impactful when I am alone. There is an intimacy with God. There are no fear of eyes on me. There are no distractions. It is just my heart crying out to God. My little iPod player is not loud enough, but more speakers can help that. 😉 I want to be lost in the loud praise music without being able to hear my voice. 🙂
I want to live my entire life as worship to God. Everything I say and do can be a gift unto the Lord. I find when I have my music playing that I often have to stop midway in a task (including writing this post) and stand and raise my hands. Often I sing along but sometimes I just have to sit or kneel and let the music fall around me as the tears just fall. I like the thought of my life of worship being interrupted my work instead my work being interrupted with worship. But work and the things we do, they do not need to be an interruption. Work can be worship, it can be sacred. All we do can be worship. Worship is defined as the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration of God.
Here are some of the songs that drew my heart into worship:
The Peace Pixie 