Jennifer Dukes Lee’s new release, How to Love Your Morning, gives a new perspective on mornings whether you typically love them or not. It can be easy to say you’re a morning person, a night owl, or somewhere in between but this book presents a persuasive argument that we are all really morning people and page by page Jennifer sets out to prove it to you.
I never considered myself a morning person even though I am not the night owl that I once was. To me, a morning person woke up energized by the early hours of the day and jumped right into whatever his or her vibe was. I could say I was convinced I was not when I compared myself to my mother, a farmer’s wife, who was up by 5:00 AM and by 8:00 AM had accomplished more than many of us do by noon.
Maybe the best place to advocate for being a morning person is to share Jennifer’s definition of a morning person:
“1. Someone who has learned to approach morning with hope and intention, not defined by the hour she wakes up, but by how she wakes up. 2. Someone who sees the first moments of the day as a sacred threshold in which to love God with her heart, soul, mind, and strength.”
She goes on to add: “It’s not about when you wake up. It’s about who you wake up to be.”
If you really don’t see yourself as a morning person, don’t hesitate to pick up this book and read page by page. You’ll find no guilt or shaming here. Whether you drag yourself out of bed or take an hour to wake up over your coffee, there’s a lot to discover about mornings in How to Love Your Morning. And that includes the truth that we are not all the same and each season there are likely shifts in your morning and how you view them.
Loving your morning starts with embracing your personal rhythm, not trying to be someone you believe a morning person should look like. Our circadian rhythms vary and I think they get impacted by seasons. Although I used to call myself a “night owl,” I never met the rhythm my mother declared I was as an infant who reportedly had her days and nights mixed up.
This book introduces you to four different morning archetypes (a set of personality categories based on personal traits and interests). You’ll want to learn more about each one and take a quiz to discover where you fit: Daybreak Doer, Morning Mover, Meditative Mind, or Social Seeker.
Once you do that, you’ll discover how to create a morning ritual that fits best for you and allows you to thrive as a morning person and grow in your relationship with God. Jennifer will help you see various rituals whatever your season of life with morning guides for different life stages: college girl, (non-mom) working professional, office mom, stay-at-home mom, empty nester, retiree, or widow.
Throughout this book you’ll hear about Jennifer’s own journey through various seasons and her mornings. (No, she wasn’t someone who saw herself as a morning person at the outset.) That journey includes looking at how mornings are highlighted throughout the Bible and their significance time and time again.
For me, I discovered at one season that my mornings were so overwhelming that if I didn’t have at least a few minutes with scripture and a journal to go with my coffee that I would never really manage the day very well at all. Finding my ritual back then when I was working full-time meant planning in advance and then discovering that no matter how tough the day ahead was there was a sense I was not alone in the midst of it. Retirement changed how I viewed the ritual I had while working and over time I was aware that nothing was going as well as I needed it to go and I needed to go back to the drawing board and create a new ritual with some of the foundation of the old one.
I was blessed to be on the book launch team for How to Love Your Morning which means I got to read an advanced copy before the book was released April 7. It captured my heart with the insights and openness Jennifer shared and if this review has tempted you to consider finding out more about how to love your morning in whatever season you find yourself you can find this book as an audio book, Kindle, or hardcover at your favorite bookstore or library. To add to the resources there is also a Bible Study Guide you can get as well. You won’t be disappointed as you walk with Jennifer page by page.
Each chapter ends with a little morsel called “Morning Manna” and a Liturgy that fits the theme of the chapter.
Let me close with one such “Morning Manna:”
“When I meet with God at the first of my day, the rest of my day automatically has to level up to meet God.”