Sunrise Engagement on the Beach

An amazing reason to wake up before 6am.

Let me start off by saying, I’m just not a morning person. I want to be a morning person. I pray at night “God, help me wake up before my kids. Help me to not silence the alarm 10 times. Please. I’m begging you.” My struggle is that 2 minutes that I wake up naturally and have to make the decision. Wake up, make coffee, have 30ish minutes alone in the morning or snuggle into whichever cat is cuddling me and go back to sleep. I can tell you 9 times out of 10, it’s the latter.

But this morning was different! I was up and out well before the kids were up, and for good reason. Before I dive in, let me rewind to the night before. It was Thursday evening, I was standing in my kitchen cooking, and it was pouring rain. I casually check the email on my phone and have a message from Hannah, confirming the session for that evening. I quickly panicked, not only because the weather was atrocious, but also because in my planner I had our session for the following evening. After a quick freakout, I shot Hannah an email back, trying to clarify about when we were actually meeting.

Well obviously we figured it out, but what a blessing that Hannah and Justin were able to quickly adapt to both changing plans and the weather, and the result makes me smile.

Instead of braving the torrential downpour that Thursday night, we made plans to meet the following morning at sunrise (I initially suggested evening but Hannah said they were headed back down to North Carolina and would have to do sunrise.) I’m not even going to lie, internally I cried a little bit. Remember…I’m not a morning gal. But I hauled my butt out of bed, stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts at the end of 37th, and was blessed by the most incredible sunrise my eyes have ever seen.

Justin and Hannah got there a few minutes after me, and I was able just bask in God’s glory and creation for a few minutes by myself. It was truly a little slice of heaven here on earth.

For the next hour and a half, we talked about life, college, COVID (ugh), how they met, and what lies ahead for them.

Hannah & Justin are getting married very soon and I could not be happier for them!