looking through me

I rounded the corner of the building and greeted a colleague with a chipper “Good Morning!”

She failed to acknowledge me. Not even a grunt.

Her body language begrudged the day: each step an effort, commuter mug suspended in front of her like a shield, eyes squinting behind over-sized sunglasses. This morning was not her friend.

I understand. I’m not a morning person. I hate being awakened by an alarm clock. I find conversations within the first hour and a half of consciousness grating and difficult. I crave a bubble of solitude to ease me into sociability.

But I love the morning.

I love the sky’s transition from dark to light. I’m mesmerized by the irreconcilable color changes—so rapid I can miss them, yet so gradual I can only catch them by looking away then back again. I revel in the stillness and relative quiet. The palpable sense of possibility envelops me. The newness. The hope.

Morning whispers “Try again . . . Start over . . . The record is clean . . . You have options.”

If I pause, I can hear wonder murmuring truth in the language of my soul. Words drowned out by the glare of day and the drear of night. Grace. New mercies. And in the hushed half-light of morning I see the race is marked out. It is mine to run.

This day is appointed for me.