I've mentioned it before, but I was not a coffee drinker
until last fall. Sure, I had the occasional
ghetto mocha (mostly hot chocolate)... and a gas station frappuccino here and
there... and there was the seriously rare trip through the McDs drive-thru when
the only other choice was falling asleep at the wheel and risking the lives of
my children. In the interest of full
disclosure, there was also this one moment near the end of my studies for my
BSM when my friend Mel brought an enormous mug of coffee to my back door, in
the middle of the night, because I begged someone to do so... on social media...
publicly! My first thirty-six years were
spent mostly coffee-free, though, and then I woke up one September morning in
Portland and decided that was going to change.
Interestingly, this opened all kinds of doors, because
people like to go out for coffee. Even
more interestingly, almost no one I go out with actually drinks coffee. So we make
coffee dates, and they drink their tea... or their healthy green stuff that I
probably would have loved during the whole organic phase that I should really
return to... or hot chocolate... or frozen confections that look more like ice
cream. And I sit there and drink coffee
and wonder why we didn't get together until I was a coffee drinker, because
apparently anything would have sufficed.
It's been a little over nine months now, and the truth is I
want my cup of coffee every morning. I
wouldn't say I'm addicted, and I don't really want just any coffee. If I find myself
somewhere without good options, I just drink water... you know... like I used
to. But I have come to like the precise
moment when I am about halfway through a cup and I look down, take a deep
breath, and realize that there is life flowing through my veins. Or caffeine.
It might be caffeine. But we'll
call it life for the purpose of this post.
Drinking coffee has changed my rhythms.
There are other things that have changed since September,
too.
I've had quite a few moments in my life when I've stopped to
re-evaluate where I am... what I'm doing... who
I am... if I like myself... if it matters...
Heck, I've done some of that right here, on the pages of this blog, right out
in the open for everyone to see. It
hasn't always been pretty, but it's real, so whatever.
I may have shared, before, a quote from Donald Miller's book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, " The human body essentially recreates itself every six months. Nearly every cell of hair and skin and bone dies and another is directed to its former place. You are not who you were" (67) six months ago. Or nine months ago. Or last year.
I'm sure not. The last nine have been something of a challenge, but I guess that's normal. There are things I wish I'd never done and things I'd change and others that I would leave exactly as they were, even if I could have the moment back. That's the thing about life, though. We don't get the moments back. Ever.
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