I’ve been a morning person for a long time, but it hasn’t always been so. 
When I was a teen, my family tried an experiment: they didn’t wake me up on a Saturday to see how long I’d sleep. I slept until 4 p.m. 
You’d think I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night, tossing and turning. But no, I went to bed at 10 p.m. and slept like a log. 
I began waking at dawn when I was in college. Technically I was not in college since I ran out of money the second semester of my second year. I decided to go to L’Abri because I could stay there for free if I worked half the day. This was back in 1981 — pre-internet — so most information was culled from a slightly more accurate version of Whisper-Down-the-Lane. 
L’Abri was sort of like a Christian commune for studying an aspect of faith that perplexed you. Mine was: Guidance. 
I knew the original L’Abri was in Switzerland and there was another in England, but I didn’t know about the fledgling one near Boston, Massachusetts, which was where I ended up. 
Since I was born outside Boston, it didn’t seem quite as exotic as Europe. However, I did have a roommate from New Zealand and that was enough for me. 
Our large, cold, Victorian room within the mansion faced east and had no curtains on the human-sized windows. 
The sun rises early on the eastern edge of the time zone and we had a giant ball of light pierce our eyelids each morning, which made it difficult to “sleep in.” 
I started to take walks upon waking, before breakfast and work began, to garner some solitude. The area was pastoral — large swathes of land dotted with mansions and farms. It wasn’t a place people walked. 
One quiet morning a woman ran towards me from a barn, screaming that I had to help her immediately! Of course I complied. Had I known it was to deliver breach twin goats, I might have hesitated. 
The births were definitely something I felt God guided me towards that day. Afterwards, I was eager to start each day early, wondering what joy might be in store.
Photos © Sondra Sula.
Take a walk with me by reading my daily devotional book, Meditations on Mendocino by Sondra Sula. Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle versions.
If you’d prefer a daily river walk, Reflections on the Fox River and Beyond by Sondra Sula, might just be the book for you.
My husband hunts dinosaurs. He spends months digging in the dry, dusty ground to expose vertebrae, ribs, femurs, skulls, and if he’s lucky, an articulated skeleton. The work is thrilling, tedious and physical. A hat is his only shade and water must be carried in on his back.
My style of dinosaur hunting is a bit less intense. It involves finding artists’ sculptures of these fantastical creatures—the crazier the better. Vernal, Utah provided a plethora of possibilities from humorous to realistic.
The “terrible lizards” peeked around every corner; some smiling, some roaring.
One even seemed to be swimming through the air. A T. rex appeared to be bullying a triceratops, who wasn’t frightened in the least. A Rodney Dangerfield type—arms and claws extended—gave the impression of imploring an imaginary audience for respect.
A hefty stegosaurus and zebra-like who-knows-what created their own horizons against the sky.
Sondra Sula's Blog: The Nature of Spirituality 