BONUS: What God Is Doing in Your Morning Routine with Jennifer Dukes Lee

Jen: Friends, welcome to this bonus episode of Good God Talks. Every once in a while, I like to surprise you with a conversation that I'm having with another Bible teacher or author or leader in Christian spaces, talking about their walk with the Lord and the things that God has been sharing with them. And so recently I got to sit down with Jennifer Dukes Lee, who was a actually was a guest host of Good God Talks way back, so I'll link that in the show notes here. But we were talking about her latest book, which is How to Love Your Morning. And I love Jennifer's approach to this.

As soon as we get into this conversation, you'll be able to see why I was so excited to have her on for this bonus episode. And so let's jump into that.

Jennifer, thank you so much for being back on Good God Talks. I am so excited to get to introduce you again to listeners who may have started listening to us since you were last here back in fall of 2023. For anyone who doesn't know you yet, can you introduce yourself a little bit?

Yeah, my name is Jennifer and I am a farm wife.

I live on the family's fifth generation farm up in the far northwest corner of Iowa, and this is where we've grown crops and we've grown people here. We have two grown daughters, Anna and Lydia. Anna is a missionary in Indonesia, and Lydia is a student at Yale Divinity School. And I'm also an author and a speaker, and I guess that's part of why I'm here.

It's a great part of why you're here. And we are getting to talk a little bit about your latest book, How to Love Your Mornings, which I feel like the title just really resonates with a lot of people, especially as believers. We want to love the morning time. I am one of those night out archetypes, so I was really excited to get to read it.

Yeah. I think that's so true. I think this book really is for everybody. It's for people who like their mornings, but wanna love them with all the productivity. There's just like productivity junkies, habit junkies, let's make the day better.

But then it's also for people who feel allergic to mornings that they're just not quite sure, they wake up continually on the wrong side of the bed and they just want things to feel different as they start their day.

Yeah, I'm in that camp. Okay. I snooze my alarm for far too long. If I can just have five more minutes. Five more minutes. Five more minutes. But I love that you give us permission by your example to reframe what it means to be a morning person, which I feel like takes the pressure off for some of us that are not, those like 5:00 AM up with the dawn kind of early risers. Will you share how you define what it means to be a morning person?

Yeah, so this is surprising to people when I tell them like, even if you're a night owl, you're a morning person. I think it's easy to believe that you're a morning person. If you're chronotype as it's called scientifically is early bird. Then, yeah, I'm a morning person, but a night owl or somebody who wakes up to a lot of chaos.

Surely, I'm not a morning person, but I wanna pitch out that we all are, any of us who are in Christ or a morning person, and I learned that while studying the more than 200 mornings mentioned in. Scripture and I discovered that God has a soft spot for mornings. I discovered that God is a morning person and because we are made in his image, we are morning people too.

And I think that's important and I'm glad you started here, Jen, because I think it's important to let go of what we've assumed about morning people, that they're happy clappy, people that jump out of a bed like a Disney princess when most of us like are maybe hitting the snooze or.

Hair sticking out in 10 different directions. It's not about when you wake up, we're gonna throw that aside. This is my definition of a morning person. A morning person is someone who has learned to approach the morning with hope. An intention, even if that is your hope and intention, is that you would wake up that way then you, that you count as a morning person.

A morning person is also someone who sees those first moments of the day as a sacred threshold to love God. So we all, I think, want to have that. And the good news is we can. Yeah I love this approach so much because I am not that early riser, as I've said. At some points I can look at my daily rhythms. Like I'm in a writing season right now and the best time for me to write is in the middle of the night when my home is quiet and I can't possibly clean anything 'cause it will be too loud. And so I have a later start in the mornings and I can feel like, oh man, I really should be. Different about my mornings, but it's not the time that you're getting up, it's the way that you approach it.

And you offer a question in the book, what if morning could be something to savor? And so I love that vantage point. No matter what time morning is you're working the night shift, you are getting up super early, are you. Start sleeping in, but what does it look like to actually anticipate savoring your morning?

And I think a lot of what I, I pulled away from your book is that anticipation of how we view what a morning could look like. That's so good. And I think that's true because we, every one of us has a morning and we can just choose to see it as oh no, another. Day to have to just trudge through, or we could see these as this thing to savor, as you mentioned, this place to love God, and to see that each morning is an unrepeatable gift.

Really to unwrap. I think what we do is we do a disservice to ourselves if we let our chronotypes drive our mornings like I'm an early bird or I'm a night owl. Because how you name yourself shapes how you live. It will determine. If you are going to savor a day, so if you see yourself as a non morning person, like I am not a morning person, then you're always gonna enter the day defeated before you begin.

But when you begin to believe that you're a morning person and that morning is this moment of hope with God, you're not just claiming a label, oh, I'm a morning person. No, it's more than that. It's a way of setting the trajectory for how you're gonna live the rest of your day. It's a way of savoring for sure.

Yes. Oh, that's so powerful. And I wanna pause there for a minute 'cause I feel like it's easy to think, oh, I could be this way, I could be a morning person until morning comes and your email's going off or you overslept or you didn't prep enough the night before. Or you’re in a season of raising kids and something's going wrong, or someone forgot something before school. How would you encourage us to think differently about what to do when morning actually arrives and it's difficult to maintain that perspective?

Yeah. I think first of all, just to know, and I just wanna say if you dread mornings or mornings are particularly hard in the season you're in, like you're not failing. Like you are human. It's not always easy to wake up thinking about sunrise walks or a yoga routine in front of floor to ceiling windows when you've got a full email box and bad medical news, a kid who didn't sleep. So a lot of times for women that morning doesn't actually feel like a fresh start.

The moment when the weight of life returns, like my eyes are open and now what? So my whole message is not work hard toward having a perfect morning. And I think when we let that go, it's super helpful. The message is really this. I'm gonna meet God in the first moments of my day, even if my quiet time is messy. Even if all I can do is whisper, good morning Jesus, or God help me. Like that counts. I really like to walk women through a healthy set of, habits that get them to a place of starting their day off, right? But they aren't things like, everybody should get up at 5:00 AM. Everybody needs to go do a half marathon before six and iron your bedsheets and have this kind of food and all those kinds of things.

It is a holistic approach. But it starts the night before with good sleep, and then when you wake up in the morning to put a few habits in place that are accessible for you. Not like doing a whole overhaul the way we feel like after making these big New Year's resolutions that just never seem to work. But these little things that we can do that really frame our minds and change our mornings and help us to influence others in our life in a really positive way.

Yes, and thank you for that. 'cause I am not one of those Pinterest picture perfect morning people. So there's so much moving. I'm not either, I'm not either.

Jen, I don't know if I would've said years ago that I was a morning person because I see what the aesthetic is. I see these women bounding out of bed. And I'm like, how is the camera already trained on you at this moment? And, going through this routine that looks really cool and is inspiring.

I love watching those. That's super fun. But that's not the way it is for me. My feet hit the floor, and I stumbled toward the kitchen as Dolly Parton would say, to pour myself a cup of ambition. And my Bible time isn't gonna look like somebody put it on a Pinterest mood board.

And there were times when my girls were little, where it was, kids at my ankles and cheerios at my feet, and a lot of interruptions. It's not perfect, but it was something that was really important starting my day and as a mom modeling it for my kids. Yeah, I would love to spend a little time there.

Okay. 'cause the way that you talked about that in the book with your daughters and the experience that you were able to cultivate as a family in their younger years is goals. For me, it is full on. I want to be invested in that way. I wanna be intentional in my mornings that way. And it can feel hard to even know where to.

Start in building that, but I felt like you made it very simple and practical when you realized as a mom that you wanted to cultivate a different type of morning for your family. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. I will say that my quiet times were anything but quiet. That, when I was trying to be alone was to like go. To the bathroom and hide with the door closed. But then there'd be like a child, like a tiny Darth Vader breathing under the doorway. That's just the way it is with little kids at home. But this book was actually my daughter's idea. They were like, you need to write a book about mornings because mornings were a great place for us.

It doesn't mean they were perfect, but we had this attitude of everything will be better in the morning, like the night before. There may have been friend drama or difficulty with the math homework or just tiredness from another busy day. But there was this idea that everything would be better in the morning.

And the way that looked like in our house wasn't, it wasn't again perfect, but whenever I could to be present here, to greet them into the day, to give them hope, to give them a hug, to have a conversation. It was about food. It was about fueling our bodies as well as our souls.

It was about prayer every morning. Again, not like we are all on our knees. While with a candle flickering on the table, it was like sometimes, very often it was when we were in the car. Driving down our long rural driveway to the end where the bus picks them up. It's a very long driveway. So we would spend our time praying as we were driving.

So if you were to take a camera and you would be like, this is simple. This is attainable it. But it worked. It was how we approached our day, taking care of our bodies, taking care of our minds, taking care of each other, and taking care of our souls. Yeah. And that framework I think is modeled really well in the book where you're talking us through, okay with all of yourself, bring your whole self to the Lord, love him with all of you, your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength.

And I think it's encouraging to know that wasn't this natural thing that was always really easy for you, because I hear a lot, especially from moms with. Kids, young kids, older kids, and they start having extracurricular activities. There can be a lot of shame and guilt around mornings or even how we approach our quiet time of this sense of I am failing at it and I don't know how to do better.

And I know one of the things that you talked about was even prior to the season with your own kids. Your growing into a quiet time with the Lord began with you as a want to believer, which I love. Yes. I think it's so relatable with questions and your questions for God turned into quiet time and so I feel like that gives permission.

Again, so much of your approach in this, I feel like is giving us permission to start where we are and not shame ourselves for our starting places. For a woman who might be struggling with that, with guilt or shame about where she's at and where she feels like she should be or where she'd want to be, what kind of encouragement would you give her about how to think differently about her mornings?

I think it's important to know that there's nothing in scripture. And again, I studied all 200 plus. There's nothing in scripture that shows us that mornings are performative. It's all about mornings that are relational, that is God met people again and again in the morning. And it wasn't because they had it all together, it was because they needed him.

And often it was because he had something for them to do. Just look at very early in the morning, Abraham, very early in the morning, Jacob, very early in the morning, Joshua, David again and again he was meeting these people in the morning because he had something that he wanted to say to them.

Often he had something he wanted them to do. And then we see even just in the scriptures like Lamentations 3:22-23 that says that his mercies are new when every morning and it says in Psalm 30:5 that weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning. And that's what I would say to that woman, like those promises from God are true not to get so caught up in what am I supposed to be doing in my morning? But what is God doing in me in the morning? When you think about your morning routine or your morning ritual, or whatever you wanna call it, don't put so much pressure on yourself to get all these things right and tick all these boxes. Just shrink it. Make it simple. Make it real. Make breakfast simple but nutritious. Make quiet time simple and small if you have to. Like you can have your lengthy Bible times later, but I do want you to spend some time with God, spend some time in his word in prayer, talking to him, acknowledging his presence.

It's these little things. It's not these big hour long quiet times. It might be if that's what works for you, but it doesn't have to be.

Yeah. I think that's helpful to remember also for the listener who's saying. My morning times are awesome. Like I'm killing it. I have a routine. Maybe they like to get up early in the mornings, but shifting the perspective from what I'm doing to what else might I notice that the Lord is doing in this time? Can bring a freshness, a renewal, even for someone who's saying, Hey, my quiet times are great. I love getting up in the morning.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about that person for a minute too. So we talked about the listener who's morning times are rough. For the one who's morning times are amazing. What else is there for me? What else could I be missing. How can I uplevel my mornings because I love them already? Do you have any advice from what you've learned to share with them?

Yeah, I would really encourage them to think about the morning routine of Jesus. And it doesn't say in the scriptures that he had one, but he did because we know that he was a devout Jew. And the Israelites and Jews still today pray the Shema. They've been doing it for centuries, even before Jesus was born. And it's based in Deuteronomy. And then Jesus quotes it again in Mark. It's this idea that you can love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and all of your mind, and all of your strength.

So as a devout Jew, Jesus would've heard the Shema every morning since he was a little kid, and that would've been a part of his morning ritual as he grew up. That's what you do every morning, is you pray that prayer, and I love it, that he is expressing every day. His intention to love God with his whole being. And that can be our intention as well. And the book really walks women toward heart, soul, mind, and strength practices throughout the book. So there are ways to think through what does it look like to love God with my heart? And maybe you're already doing that with a lengthy quiet time, but maybe there's something like worry that constantly weighs you down, like maybe worrying is just accidentally a part of your morning routine. So I walk you through mind practices that help displace that worry with the things of God. And I think this is a part that we often miss as women is how do we honor the bodies that God gave us in the morning?

So it may be that you have a great quiet time with the Lord, but you realize you're really low on sleep. Maybe you need to have a better evening ritual to make your mornings even better. Maybe you need to move your body a little bit in the morning because you realize, man, if I don't move in the morning sometimes I just don't get that exercise done at all. And also taking care of your body with. The food that you put into it, like how you're gonna start your day. So it's a very holistic approach and for most of us, we're doing a couple of those things fairly well. But if we really wanna level up our mornings, we can love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength like Jesus did.

That's fantastic, and I'll be remiss to let you go without talking about this too. There's also a Bible study Yes. That comes along with how to love your mornings. And so listeners, you can get both or either how do they compliment each other? What would you recommend?

Yes. One of the things that's really important to me when I write bible studies is that they wouldn't feel like this is what I already read in the book. Thankfully there's a lot of material because with 200 and some mornings, and God doing a lot of things on the backdrop of a morning, I had a ton of content to work with. So they are complimentary in that I give you readings in the book and then you can do things in the workbook. And then on top of that I have free videos. So there's a lot of content that you can go through. It would be great for a group. Of women to go through or all by yourself. And it is possible that if you couldn't afford both the book and the Bible study does the work all by itself. It can stand alone. So there's a wealth of resources to help us really love our mornings, which I'm so grateful for.

Jennifer, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Any closing thoughts that you would wanna make sure to share?

Yeah, I just I really want for women to wake up to each new day saying, Lord, thank you for another day to live, to enjoy, and to love you. That my circumstances might not be the greatest right now, but I trust that your mercies are new every single morning and every single moment.

Yeah. That's so good.

Jen: Friends, I hope you are as encouraged as I am by this conversation. I hope it takes a load off if you are not a natural, early morning, bubbly, break of dawn riser. And I wanted to give you links here in the show notes for all the places that you can connect with Jennifer Dukes Lee and find her many books, including the latest one, How to Love Your Morning.

If there was a theme or a topic that really sparked in your mind or heart as you listened today, I encourage you take that idea over to the Lord and talk with him more about it. I know there's more that he wants to share with you as you go through daily life with him.

And as always, have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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