For a long time, well for a few years anyway, I had habits that served me well. Each weekday morning, at 5:00 AM, I would barely register my husband’s alarm, roll over and go back to sleep. At 5:30, church bells would issue from my phone, and then I’d actually wake up, roll out of bed, visit the washroom, and return to bed. This time, I was sitting up, pen in hand, or computer on lap. It was time to write; it was time to let my self hear my words. It was important that I did this, listened to my own words, before I let in the words of others.

An hour later, I would check emails, and then maybe the news, before going downstairs to exercise. Every weekday morning, I would get hot, sweaty and out of breath before starting my work day. (On the weekends, there were plenty of activities both work and leisure to render me breathless.)

Then it was time to pack a lunch for my husband, and make breakfast for the two of us. I’d set the table in front of the kitchen picture-window, cut grapefruit, set out toast and eggs, yogurt with fruit and nuts, or maybe I’d feel inspired by Turkish friends and there would be olives, cheese, bread, a dab of cherry jam… For a blessed fifteen minutes, my husband Kevin and I would sit together, sharing a little food, a little time, enjoying the antics of birds at the feeders, chipmunks on the rock wall. We would sit together and watch morning come to our homestead.

For the last year, my morning routine has been off track. A simple thing (just not so simple to correct) set the change in motion: the platform inside my website was no longer working. This meant that posting a bit of writing to my blog was no longer simple. In years previous, I could write and edit Monday through Thursday, then take 15 minutes (or at most a half an hour) on Friday to copy and paste that essay, find a complimentary photo, play with fonts and spacing, post on the LCM site, then share on Facebook. By December 2014, the process of simply adding my words to my website’s blog was taking up to 2 hours. Dealing with that every week was going to give me an ulcer! Instead, I stopped writing, I stopped posting blogs. Then exercise became sporadic. Then breakfast together was often just a quick peck on the cheek, and my husband eating yogurt in the car on his way to work.

That ‘simple thing’ motivated me to have the website overhauled: now the website is functional, informative, device responsive and still very pretty. However, that ‘simple thing’ was also all it took for me to drop my healthy morning habits.

All my life, I’ve heard “habits are hard to change”. It turns out that good habits are easy to change. They are quite easy to lose. And once you lose them, they are really hard to reclaim. Since the simple website debacle, I have had a 15 month hiatus from my good morning habits, in Midwife Time, that is one and a half gestations. Simply put, I am over-due for a change.

A few weeks ago, my new website quietly launched. Knowing that I needed to reclaim my long-lost habits, I’ve used the launch as a personal turning point. While I realize that good habits are easy to lose and hard to reclaim, I also believe that my physical, emotional and spiritual health is worth it.

Now when my husband’s alarm goes off at 5:00 AM, I still roll over, pull the covers up and pretend that I don’t hear a thing. But thirty minutes later, when church bells chime from my iPhone, I wake up, get out of bed, wash my face and get the day started. First, I write down words that are my head (before I let in the words of others). After writing, I quickly check email and the calendar, ingest an inspirational reading, and maybe look at the news. Then it is time for exercise, and last but certainly not least, a quick but leisurely breakfast with my love.

Michelle
May all babies be born into loving hands