Guard Your Mornings: A Morning Routine for a Noisy World

A Morning Routine for a Loud World

If someone turns the TV above a 1 when I first wake up, I feel like my ears are bleeding.

My husband thinks I’m dramatic, but when I first wake up, my hearing is basically super-sonic. Every sound feels amplified. You know, like when you get in the car in the morning, and the radio comes blasting because the version of you who drove it last night is clearly not the same.

Not to mention, this girl does not wake up to a blaring horn alarm. No ma’am. My alarm is a gentle little chime called Early Riser. It sounds like the morning politely knocking and saying sweetly, "Good morning… whenever you’re ready.”

A perfect morning routine goes like this:

Silence

Stillness

A good cup of hot percolated coffee with homemade creamer.

A slow rise to the day.

Because the world gets loud fast enough on its own.

Not just the kind of loud you hear.

The kind that bombards your mind before your feet even touch the floor.

Notifications.

To-do lists.

Emails.

Texts.

Commitments.

Responsibilities.

Sometimes it feels like we wake up already behind, and maybe we are.

But mornings were never meant to start that way.

Somewhere along the way, the world got louder than it should be. Above a volume of 1.

And if I’m honest, I let it in.

Too many commitments.

Too many notifications.

Too many good things slowly crowded out the best thing.

And now when I sit down to pray, my mind feels like a junk drawer.

Cluttered.

Overfull.

Hard to find what I came looking for.

It’s difficult to sit at Jesus’ feet when your life is packed so tight there’s nowhere to sit.

Our minds are cluttered.

Our schedules are cluttered.

Our homes are cluttered.

Our yeses are cluttered.

We have filled every margin until there is no space left for stillness.

The Noise We Let In

It’s the mental noise.

The digital noise.

The emotional noise.

Scrolling before praying.

Checking email before breathing.

Trying to pray while mentally reorganizing my closet.

Ever done that?

You start praying, and suddenly you’re planning dinner, rewriting tomorrow’s schedule, and wondering where that sweater went.

The noise sneaks in quietly.

Don’t Consume the World Before the Word

I say this often:

Don’t consume the world before you consume the Word.

It sounds simple.

It is simple.

But it isn’t easy.

If the first thing we reach for in the morning is our phone, then our focus is already outward. Already reactive. Already pulled in ten directions.

Instead of asking,

“Lord, where are You leading?”

I’ll be honest.

The past few weeks, I’ve felt like a scattered mess.

Between leading Women in Motion, hello Women’s Month, being a theatre mom, showing up as a wife and mom, and chasing the ideas constantly tapping on my shoulder…

I’ve felt stretched thin.

It is noisy out there.

The Discipline of Quiet

Silence isn’t empty.

It’s where direction shows up.

It’s where the Spirit whispers instead of shouts.

Maybe that’s why Jesus often went away to quiet places to pray.

Before the crowds.

Before the teaching.

Before the work.

He stepped into the quiet first.

Maybe we were meant to do the same.

Before the emails.

Before the scrolling.

Before the noise.

Just a quiet morning.

Volume at about a 1.