The Dentist’s Chair

I’m sitting in Dr. Perez’s waiting room, and while I like him well enough, I can’t help but remember when my dentist was my dad. His hands were steady and sure; I could fall asleep in that chair, trusting completely. My father was the same in real life: reliable, constant. You could set your watch by him. He made promises, followed through, showed up in word and deed.

He wasn’t an easy man to please. He held me to high expectations in behavior and character. I always fell short of perfection, but striving to make Dad proud fostered something important in me – a hunger for steadiness and success I’d spend my adult life seeking.

The Question That Stopped Me

My new psychiatrist—she asked me to call her Moe—spent an hour with me yesterday. These appointments are usually fifteen-minute medication check-ins, but new doctors require new introductions. Near the end, she asked something that made me pause:

“I see the way you’re working to meet everyone else’s needs – your family’s, your students’. How do you get your needs met?”

Moe had just met me, but my readers know the answer.

“At the sunrise, every day. I meet God there.”

A Year of Sunrises

This November marks a year since my husband first took me to watch the sunrise at Yorktown Beach. The hope was that I’d find a circadian rhythm to help stabilize my bipolar disorder. I did find that rhythm, but I found something more important: a daily reminder that the singular, steady constant is the Creator.

For hundreds of days strung together, I’ve approached His sunrise at dawn like an altar. Rain, sleet, snow, clouds, clear skies. The sky never fails to lighten, sometimes with magical hues that shift and change, sometimes a light and shadow show.

I journal. I watch the day reset. I can’t count on everything else in my life, but I can count on this: God makes the sun come up, every day. I can set my watch by it.

The Constants We’re Given

Is it any wonder I experienced superior mood stability in adolescence? Under the careful watch of two invested parents who maintained a consistent weekly schedule, appropriately loaded with meaningful activities, punctuated by downtime my siblings and I spent making fun together.

But we can’t stay children forever. We leave our parents’ steady hands and have to find our own constants.

Sometimes, the sun and moon compromise and share the same sky in the early dawn, but the greater light always wins the day. This image has been sitting with me—how we try to balance competing forces, but ultimately, we need to know which light to follow.

The Sanctuary We Build

We could outline all the ways to make a home a sanctuary for someone with bipolar disorder. I’ve written chapters about it. But the humans we live with have their own struggles, their own choices and behaviors. In reality, more often than not, the people around us are too consumed by their own battles to prioritize being our sanctuary.

We know the best researched strategies for peace and calm. We forget to use them in the moment.

That’s why the sunrise matters. It doesn’t forget. It doesn’t get distracted by its own struggles. It simply shows up.

The Support That Holds

Moe seemed surprised by the self-care routines I have in place. She was pleased to hear about my support system:

• Regular counseling (both individual and family)
• A church community that knows my story
• Gabrielle, my sister-in-law, who understands me better than perhaps anyone
• Mama Marci, my friend and mentor, who loved me when I was young and joyful and still does, after all my missteps

These are the people who’ve become like sunrise… steady presences even when life shifts.

What We Can Count On

My dad taught me to expect steadiness from the world. Life taught me that humans are variables, even the most well-meaning ones. But every morning, the sunrise teaches me something else: that God’s mercies are new every morning, as predictable as dawn itself.

I can’t set my watch by people anymore. Their love might be real but their consistency wavers; they’re human, fighting their own battles, carrying their own burdens.

The sun, on the other hand? The sun rises because God commands it. Every day, He keeps this promise.

The Greater Light

Genesis tells us God created two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. Every morning, I watch this ancient promise fulfilled. The greater light always wins. Not because the sun is powerful on its own, but because the One who spoke it into being is faithful.

When everything else in my life feels variable—when human love waxes and wanes like the moon, when the steadiness I grew up expecting proves impossible to find in other mortals—I remember I was never meant to set my watch by human hands. Not even my father’s steady ones. Not even my own.

I was meant to set it by the Creator who numbers the stars and calls them each by name, who knows when the mountain goats give birth, who provides for the ravens when they call. The One who makes the sun rise on the evil and the good, who sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous alike.

The Altar at Dawn

In a world of variables, we need at least one constant. For some, it might be medication taken at the same time each day. For others, it’s a therapist’s weekly appointment. But these are still human solutions, subject to human frailty.

For me, it’s the sunrise—not just as a natural phenomenon, but as a daily appointment with the One who makes it rise. That altar at dawn where I’m reminded that my stability doesn’t come from having steady people around me. It comes from anchoring myself to the One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

You can’t set your watch by people. They take off and put on their various commitments, they struggle with their own storms, they forget to be lighthouses when they’re barely staying afloat themselves.

However, you can set your watch by the sun because you can count on the One who makes it rise.

Every morning, without fail, He proves His faithfulness. Not in the ways I might script—not always through steady human hands or constant human love—but through this simple, profound promise: the sun will rise. The day will begin again. His mercies will be new.