I can’t remember ever having been a morning person. This is just one more way in which I doubt my capacity as a parent. My child, like most, wakes up bright and early, every day (even weekends, even holidays, etc. etc.), which I know is merely a fact of biology, but I fear it speaks to some innocence or motivation I’ve long since lost. I can bring myself, most mornings, to wake up around the same time as her, but not much earlier, meaning I begin my day not with exercise or thoughtful contemplation but with a few minutes of doomscrolling and maybe a cup of coffee before I am regaled with stories of what her toy trucks have been doing since she woke up. I’ll optimistically set my alarm for an hour or so before her wake up time, envisioning a productive stretch of a brisk walk or a Pilates video followed by some earnest journaling and meditation, and then hit the snooze button anyway. Six a.m. is not the time at which I remember how grumpy and claustrophobic I feel after a few long days at home; it’s four p.m., when both of our energies are fading and the siren call of Disney+ tempts me to pack it in for the day, when I’m unfortunately reminded that the only way I can guarantee myself that good hour is to get my ass out of bed and that I always, always, always regret it when I don’t—if not that very day, then after a string of them.

I should be taking advantage of the early sunrises of summer to reset my circadian rhythms, to train myself to be a morning person the way Navy SEALs or cloistered nuns do, but anyone who’s met me even once knows that I’m not cut out to be either. I’m still recovering from six weeks or so of traveling, hosting, and celebrating, and before that, a spring season of uneven weather positively laden with migraine headaches, and as such I’ve cut myself even more slack than usual. I know it’s not entirely unwarranted. Still, when I heard Pastor Claire preach this morning on Matthew 11:28;30, I felt a great sense of relief, even though I was called out by Romans 7 even before I knew that it was the epistle reading for the day (“The thing I would not do is the very thing I do, etc. etc.” I scrawled in my journal before I glanced at the bulletin with the readings. Okay, God, you got me, good one. Etc. Etc.)

Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest, Jesus says. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. I’ve always heard the irony in this statement—no burden could have been heavier, of course, and yet Jesus carried it off without a hitch—and the gap between his words and the meaning provide his point: Nothing we could give Jesus could add to the burden he bears so easily. But turn the text ninety degrees or so, into a sunbeam falling into an adjacent window at a different time of day, and consider: My burden is light. Bringing light into the world and living alongside it; stilling in its glare, surviving what it exposes, and being able to bring it in the right measure to those who need it. Even Jesus struggled with it, tempted by forces greater than Bluey, begging to be released from the compact that was one with himself. Turn the text back again: Still he did it.

***

My track record with plants this year is thoroughly mixed. Just when I was ready to give up on the fig tree, I noticed a few small green fruits starting to swell on some of the lower branches after I finally did a massive and vengeful weeding job around it. The Brazilian philodendrons that were all on the verge of death for reasons unclear are coming back to life in east-facing locales. On the other hand, two rounds of dainty annuals in sphagnum moss hanging baskets have been toasted to respective crisps, and the driveway reconstruction led to the destruction of most of the orange daylilies along the side of the house. I still haven’t gotten around to transplanting the robust hostas from the back, where no one can see them, to beds I still haven’t dug along the front walkway. Etc. etc.

My greatest success has been with Senecio rowleyanus, the String of Pearls plant, a finicky formerly south-facing succulent. As they  shriveled, I consulted two greener-thumbed friends, both of whom have lush Strings I’d admired in the past. One of them lamented the delicacy of the plant and recalled his own failed attempts at cultivation; the other suggested transplanting them into clay and moving them outside. And now that my Strings are, against all odds, beginning to thrive on the back porch, I consider what growth requires. Light, of course, along with water and the occasional change of scenery. Validation and encouragement, alongside practical advice.

***

Will I become a morning person after all? It seems unlikely. Maybe especially in July, my burden is light: the light that falls on me when I’ve once again let 6:45 find me horizontal and grouchy, exposing me as the very-thing-I-would-not-do-er yet again; the light that frazzles the alyssum (“cool blooming,” apparently, good to know!!!) and dries out the figs to mealiness without enough water; the light that also urges and nourishes and resurrects.

Still, I’m going to try again. Bringing the light requires living in it, as much as we can tolerate and then perhaps a bit more. The people I love deserve it. I think I do too.

Photo credit: Lisa Emanuel on Unsplash