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Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Late Night Personal Reflections About Coffee



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. 

I wonder who I'll be six months from now.  For the first time in awhile, I think I really care... 

L.

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