Tell us about your morning routine.
My morning routine is simple: I read, and I write.
Before the day fills with conversations, responsibilities, and other people’s needs, I spend time with words. Some belong to someone else. Some are waiting for me to find them. Moving between the two helps me begin the day with a little more curiosity and a little more clarity.
Reading gives me something to consider beyond whatever is already circling in my own mind. A good sentence can make me pause. A story can bring me into a life different from mine. Sometimes I find a thought I want to argue with, which can be just as useful as finding one I want to underline.
As a pastor, I spend much of my life thinking about what words mean and what they do to or for people. Words can welcome someone or make them feel there is no place for them. They can offer comfort, ask difficult questions, or put language around an experience someone has carried alone. Reading reminds me to listen carefully before I speak.
It also reminds me that I am still learning. Whatever my age or experience, there are perspectives I have not considered and stories I have not heard. I like beginning the day with that possibility.
Then there is writing.
Sometimes my writing has a clear destination: a sermon, an article, a chapter. Other times, I begin with a thought that has stayed with me and see where it leads. I may know what I want to say, only to discover halfway through a paragraph that there is something more honest underneath it.
That is one of the reasons I keep returning to the page. Writing helps me understand what I think. It asks me to slow down enough to choose a word, examine an assumption, or stay with a feeling I might otherwise hurry past.
My life has given me plenty to write about: faith, belonging, identity, love, and the complicated work of becoming yourself. Those subjects rarely arrive neatly arranged. On the page, I can approach them a sentence at a time.
Some mornings the words come easily. Other mornings I spend more time revising than creating. A paragraph that seemed promising yesterday may need to be cut today. I have learned that this is part of the work. Showing up matters even when the result is modest.
I value these morning hours because they give my own thoughts some room before I begin responding to everyone else’s. Ministry requires attention to people. Writing requires attention, too. This routine helps me bring more of it to both.
I don’t need every morning to produce something profound. Sometimes a few pages read and a few honest sentences written are enough. I can carry a question from a book into the rest of my day. I can leave a draft unfinished and return to it tomorrow.
There is something hopeful about that unfinished page.
It means I still have something to explore. Something to learn. Something to say more clearly.
So I begin my mornings by reading and writing. I listen to another voice, then make space for my own. And when the day begins asking things of me, I have already spent a little time with the work I love.
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