37. Trustworthy ruts

If I wake too early, and it seems I'm not going back to sleep, but I think it's too early to get up, I'll do something with the time — pray, read a few pages of a bedside book, listen to that day's Daily Audio Bible reading. Sometimes I drift back into sleep and dream a crazy intense dream. There were lots of strangers and stress in this morning's dream, but there was one friend (an actual friend in real life) who took an unhurried walk with me down a quiet grassy path between, well, a rock (a sheer gray cliff) and a hard place (a meeting where I knew no one and felt disoriented and ill prepared, and could never find a watch or clock to tell me what time it was).

After these morning dreams, I wake refreshed, as if the dream ran some sort of defrag program in my brain.

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"Do I want another doughnut?" I asked my neighbor at work. He considered, then said, firmly, "No." Sometimes I'm glad to have people speak truth to me.

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Anticipate: expect or look forward to in a way that requires some preparation. (That's my own definition.) It's good to have things to anticipate. I am looking forward to having people over soon, a concert, phone dates, a weekend retreat, and to the incremental forward motion in a life that each of these represents.

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I like it when I've been away and someone calls to see how my weekend was.

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People have been sweet to each other on Facebook today — celebrating a new job, sharing tips for gluten-free eating on the run, introducing themselves and offering advice to first-timers in anticipation of a retreat, delighting in a book that's about to be released, keeping people company through hard things. Steering clear of rocks, softening the hard places, and wearing trustworthy ruts to follow.

What did you like about your day?