Not before breakfast...please

I've known for some time that I'm not great before breakfast. I used to think I was a morning person, but actually I'm not - at least not before breakfast.

My first glimpse of this was at uni. I lived in a residential college and it was not uncommon for people to go off jogging around the university, which was bordered by a river on most sides. In my first year my neighbour used to go jogging before breakfast and I thought I'd have a go. Not a good idea. I ended up nearly collapsing and hitch hiking, for the first and only time in my life, a lift back to college.

Since then I've been relatively careful about breakfast. I've never understood how people can just skip this meal. I just don't function. And I'm not talking about coffee, in fact I rarely drink caffeinated coffee before mid-morning. I'm talking about real food.

But I made a big mistake yesterday at church. I've never been to a "Brekkie church" service before (read 7.45am). A service where you eat toast, drink coffee and worship at the same time. It was a unique experience. Unfortunately, we were not just attending, but speaking too. In perfect hindsight, I see that I should have stopped praying earlier (we read the Bible and pray together in bed before most days) and gotten up to get some food into me before we left home. Alas, I didn't and I barely had time to jump into my clothes and slap some make-up on before we left.

When we arrived (just as it all started), we ended up with a table at the very front - the opposite corner to where the food was. So, while my husband dealt with tricky technical stuff (getting our Powerpoint presentation to work), I dealt with trying to get not only myself fed, but my boys too. It wasn't easy to thread my way between chairs, back and forth between our table and the kitchen several times, while, at the same time stuffing myself with as much toast as I could manage. All the time aware that I was the guest speaker and people were probably watching me.

Then I had to stand up and say my thing. Thankfully it was fairly well written out, though, by some lack of forethought, we'd manage to schedule one of my more emotional stories so I nearly cried too.

The end result - I don't know how everyone else felt, but I ended up with a mama headache! One that didn't end until after lunch and medication and a good lie down.

If God did work in anyone's heart it certainly wasn't through my strength!