The First Thing Out Of My Mouth

Naomi found out what her first sentence was because of a toddler, which is how most people find out most things about themselves.

Her sister's boy was staying for a week and he had reached the age where he repeats you. Not to be funny. He just says whatever the last thing was, in the same tone, about four seconds later, like a small tired parrot with a slight lisp.

On the Tuesday morning she came into the kitchen at ten to seven, put the light on, looked at the sink, and said, "Oh, for goodness' sake."

And a voice from the doorway behind her said, "Oh, fuh goodness sake."

She turned round. He was in a dinosaur onesie with one arm out of it and he was extremely pleased with himself.

She laughed. And then she stood there with the faucet running and did not laugh, because she had heard it, properly, from the outside, in a small voice at hip height, and she knew with complete certainty that it was not just Tuesday. It was every day. It had been every day for a long time.

She did an audit that week, quietly, because she is that kind of person. She started paying attention to the actual first thing she said out loud each day.

Monday: a groan at the alarm. Tuesday: the sink. Wednesday: something about the traffic she could hear from the bedroom. Thursday: "right." Just "right," flatly, at the ceiling, like a woman going into a meeting she did not book.

Not one of those is a crime. She was not being a terrible person. That is the thing she wants people to understand. She was tired, and the days were genuinely hard, and every one of those sentences was true.

They were true, and they were also the door she walked through into every single day of her life, and nobody had ever once suggested to her that she got to choose the door.

You have a first sentence too. You almost certainly do not know what it is, because nobody hears their own, and it has probably been the same one for a very long time. And it is likely true, and likely fair, and nobody has ever stood in a kitchen doorway behind you and said it back to you in a little voice so you could hear it.

The Man Who Sang In The Morning Was Not Having A Good Week

Here is what makes the verse about singing in the morning usable instead of insulting.

"But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble."Psalm 59:16

Look at the last six words. In the day of my trouble. That psalm was written by a man with people outside the house waiting for him. The heading on it says so. He is not singing in the morning because things are going well. He is singing in the morning because he has to get through a day and he knows what he wants his mouth to do first.

That is the difference between a changed first sentence and pretending. Pretending says the sink is fine. This does not. This says: the sink is not fine, and I am naming who has been my defense before I name the sink.

You are allowed to say something true and something else true in the same breath. Psalm 59 puts the singing and the trouble in one sentence without canceling either, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a song written with men at the door and lands it in a kitchen at ten to seven.

And there is an order in that psalm, and the order is the whole subject of this site. The mercy gets named in the morning, before the day of trouble gets its turn. The trouble is still there. It is simply not first any more.

You have been given a mouth and the first minute of a day, and the order of what comes out of it is genuinely yours to set. That is what the written word does with mornings again and again, and it is the Spirit of God who makes that feel like power rather than like homework.

Not Pretending, Just Not Going Second

Now the part that matters, and it matters most if you are the kind of person who cannot stand anything fake.

Changing the first sentence is not positive thinking. Nobody is asking you to be pleased about the sink. Naomi did not start saying that everything was wonderful, because it was not, and she would have lasted about two days.

What she started doing was saying one thing to God before she said the first thing to the day.

Some mornings it was thank You for the sleep, which was true. Some mornings it was help me, which was truer. One morning in October it was just His name, out loud, at the ceiling, and nothing else at all, because that was everything she had.

And the sink was still there. She still said something about the sink. It simply was not the first thing any more.

You are not being asked to lie about your Tuesday. It is written that we may come boldly, which means honestly, and His Spirit is the one who has been listening to your actual first sentences for years without ever once flinching at them.

And here is the guard, because this is exactly where a freeing thing becomes a rule. Nothing on this page is a requirement. There is no formula, no wording that has to be right, no number of mornings, no streak, and nothing routed to anyone at all. If tomorrow you groan at the alarm the way you have groaned at it for eleven years, you are exactly as much His at the end of that day as at the start of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping this from turning into one more thing you are failing.