Surviving the Valley of Suck: Own the Morning

It has been seven years since my first wife, Heather, died of cancer and I coined the phrase: Valley of Suck to describe the process and journey of grief.  The suck describes how plans, dreams, visions and hopes are "sucked" out of our lives.  I haven't met a widow or widower yet who hasn't resonated in one degree or another with that phrase.

You don't get over grief.  You go through it.  And if you take time and do grief well, you reflect and learn.  Many lessons have come and I've had people ask many times how I handled it.  For one thing, I wrote a book: Life Sucks, Seek God.  I went to counseling.  I kept living.  Yep, I made mistakes...a lot of them.  I tried to be the best only parent I could be for my kids and always tried to keep moving forward.

Two steps forward. One step back.  Baby steps.

But even so, I struggled.  For the sake of my self, my soul, my family, I made the decision to take a leave of absence from ministry and pursue an income as a Realtor here in Alaska.  At the encouragement of my mentor, our team begin reading "The Miracle Morning."  It was a book I could easily have written as I had been doing almost all of the morning rituals/habits in the book before Heather died.  

And then it hit me.


During the time after Heather died, I was living off the full tank of investing in myself every morning.  The habit had so filled me and shaped me, with the spotty practicing of my morning ritual, I have been living off of nearly 25 years of my morning ritual.

I have been running on empty.

The last 45 days though, I have picked it up.  I've been on my stationary bike, listening to Our Daily Bread and audio books as I strengthen my heart, soul, mind and body.  I journal and vision and affirm.  Then on Sunday morning, at 5am as I struggled to wake with my alarm, I heard in my mind these words:

Go Get the Day.

"Own your morning and you'll own your day," writes Hal Elrod.  I sense the change, 4 wheel drive is engaged and there is traction.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).  God - the Divine, has been faithful and as I have engaged faithfully, I sense and know the pleasure and hope that God gives.  To fight with the snooze and not wake and go after the day is to say to your mind and the universe, you don't want to live - you want to give up.  NO WAY!