Our theme for the month of March is “I was wrong about.”
I first started practicing Lent during my time as a student at Calvin, and continued because of all the interesting things such a season of spiritual disciplines usually teaches me. Bubble tea doesn’t count as caffeine if you get a juice kind, for example, but it does break a fast if you’re skipping meals, and one of the best ways to get excited for a Sabbath is when it’s the only day of the week you can snatch a piece of Ghirardelli 86% cacao. Usually, though, I can recognize a good lenten fast idea when the very thought of it makes me want to stomp my feet and groan into a pillow. Which is exactly how I spent the evening before Ash Wednesday a couple weeks ago. Stomping and groaning.
And I’ve been waking up at 8 am ever since.
If you haven’t guessed, I’m a night owl. One of those unfortunate souls whose sleep schedule flops several hours forward as soon as I’m home for school break, leaving me to peel out of bed like an overripe banana at 12:45 pm multiple days a week. Does it feel good to stay up so late and sleep in so much? You’d think, since we keep doing it. But my night owl friend found a good way to explain the experience just recently, how sleeping in feels more like some sort of sin. You’ve done it again. Half the day’s gone and you’re still wearing your puppy pajamas, and now it’s two in the morning and you’re still putzing around on your laptop like a nocturnal couch potato. Shame on you.
All night owls I’ve ever talked to have recognized it’s not a super healthy lifestyle. But it also feels inescapable. Even when I worked an 8-6 job during summers in high school, I still stayed up till 1 am every night and took desperation naps when I got back from work. (Not my best decisions.)
So for Lent this year—which spans the entirety of spring break on my Japanese school calendar—I determined to stop sleeping in entirely. Go to bed earlier or suffer the consequences; using naps as a crutch is not allowed. I expected a rough transition and it was just about as rough as I thought it’d be, but I still have no idea what to expect from the practice in the long run. Will I transform into a morning person? Will I ever willingly wake up before I’m required to? I haven’t landed on any answers yet, but what I have stumbled into is the reason I stay up to begin with.
At around the beginning of Lent, my explorations of the Bible brought me not to Jesus’ fast in the desert, but to its model: Israel’s long, meandering trek to the Promised Land. Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers all chronicle the forty-odd years Israel spent in the wilderness following God’s seemingly aimless directions. God used this time to train them out of the ways of their oppressors in Egypt and toward fairness and trust in Him; they’d picked up a persistent scarcity mentality from centuries of slavery and it had to go before they could inherit the Promised Land. So He says to collect only enough manna for each day so they’ll learn to trust that He will provide manna again tomorrow (Ex. 16). Feast at both the beginning and the end of their harvest so they will learn that God does not starve them in the winter to fill their table now (Ex. 23, Lev. 23). Take a Sabbath once a week and do no work because God will provide for their fields and their family while they rest. Israel is slaves no longer, He says, because He will give them everything they need.
And it occurred to me, reading this, that when I’m in bed late at night, the reason I stay up is always because I’m finishing something I don’t want to stop, or starting something fun I didn’t get to do earlier, or addressing things I think I’ll forget in the morning. I think that when I wake up, there won’t be time. I’ll be too rushed to do anything fun, and even if I do have time, I’d always rather sleep anyway because I’m always short on that. The assumption is that the morning is for getting dressed and taming my hair and setting out for class or my job—not for reading. Relaxing. Playing.
But requiring myself to sleep at night has forced me to view the time after waking as an available space. It has forced me to put down my doing with the trust that I can go back to it when the sun returns. That respecting the boundary of sleep acknowledges the opportunity of the morning.
As it turns out, I can do things I enjoy in the morning. And that’s what a lot of early birds have been doing all along. The quiet morning coffee or Bible study. Sitting by the window with a good book. Watching the sunrise. Taking a walk. The morning people I know don’t think of mornings the same way I always have. I don’t know if training out of a scarcity mentality will be as simple as six weeks of early alarms or if it will be closer to forty-two years of tests in the wilderness. But somehow I sense there is change coming. Like a new day dawning, if I can be awake to greet it.
Emilyn Shortridge (’25) spent her Calvin years studying English linguistics, Asian studies, and ministry leadership, and intends to finish her Asian studies program in Chiba, Japan, in 2026. When at home in Plymouth, Michigan, she thrives anywhere near fantasy novels, houseplants, hot tea, or her calico cat, Genie, but she plans to live and learn in many cultures before deciding which corner of the world needs her most.
