“I woke you up for a reason.”

Bob Hatcher

December 6, 2012

When my friend, Brian Richardson, has awakened for the past few weeks he has been seeing this handwritten message on the mirror in his bathroom: “I woke you up for a reason.” It is a message to Brian from God.  It is a message, quite like the messages one occasionally sees posted in large letters outside churches for people driving by. I like lots of the messages posted by the Bethel Baptist Church in Tiger. 

So Brian’s next step each day is to consider God’s question.  I also consider this one of my objectives each day.  I don’t put it exactly this way, but it is a part of my early, early morning meditation or centering.  What I am hoping to find is a task, large or small, that I can achieve today.  Today is the time span I am usually thinking about when I am ready to ask God or ask the ground of my being,  or ask the Universe, as Rhonda Byrne calls it in The Secret, for the thing I want to do – the thing that reflects the reason I was awakened.  

And when I consider why I may be alive for today I very much have in mind, the phrase “ may thy will not my will be done” as I go about this day.

I will sometimes try to think of one person to whom I may reach out in love?

Or I might ask myself who needs something that I might have the ability to give him or her?

Since people simply love to be thanked, this is an easy task I can consider because I am convinced that an attitude of gratitude is a step in the right direction. On a given day my answer to God’s little prod “I woke you up for a reason” might be to write a brief note of thanks to my wife for her wonderful creativity. I am so lucky because I get to see every single day the fruits of her creativity.  At other times in my life notes of thanks have been part of a longer range goal: for example to write a note of thanks each day for a month or even for a year. Or try this one -  I might decide to have a New Year’s resolution to try to act like Caroline White at F.A.I.T.H. (Fight Abuse In The Home) who keeps track of thank you notes she has written.  In one recent 12 month period she wrote 1,300 thank you notes. Amazing lady, that Caroline White.  

Enough of these ramblings. It has come time to answer  God’s prod right now for this one day.  My next thought was “Won’t it be good to go for an hour to F.A.I.T.H. and to have Dr. Nancy Rampell at my side as we discuss the challenges facing the women who are at F.A.I.T.H. today.

Robert A. Hatcher MD, MPH
Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, Georgia