*What to Do with Daylight

Daylight starts early around here these days-and with a bedroom facing the morning sun its hard not to get up early. And when you realize you have ten days ( minus four that you'll be doing fun travel-y things) to pack up your whole house you start getting up earlier....

As a Christian I feel like sometimes the Son shines brighter and I cannot help but "get up early" and do what I can in the daylight that I have. Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord....I think my migraine not only forced me to bed, but it forced me to pray more than I have in weeks...to sit and be forced to think about all the things I'd pushed aside. I pray for those that are on my heart. It was a pleasure. ( And with that, I'd like to go ahead and request that the headache I have this morning STAY just a "little" headache and not turn into something more...I've had enough "quiet time").... I did quite a bit of praying for my Coffee House People during my "bedded down time".

...those that I had the privilege to become friends with during my 11 months at Lacoste Coffee. Beautiful people with hearts that Shone with the Light of Christ.
I think one of the biggest lessons I learned this year was the lesson of loving. Loving people through actions...loving through time. I watched it through my little group of elderly ladies who came and talked over their cups of coffees for hours as they went through all their own heartaches, their burdens for the people they went to church with, their desires for the lost ones that God has placed in their lives and finished by holding hands in a circle and giving those things to the Lord. I saw it in the retired pastor who came and sat with widowers who'd nursed their wives through last sicknesses and now were at a loss at what to do with themselves. I saw it in the lady who worked at Albertsons across the street, who spent countless hours finding more suitable living situations for a few elderly people that lived in the dilapidated apartments across from the coffee house. I saw it in "M", ( I'm not sure if she'd want her name advertised) a pharmaceutical rep who came every Tuesday to do her work talking to doctors as they came in for coffee, but ended up spending most of her time befriending a nurse who worked nights and came in needing someone to talk to...

Yes, coffee is choice. You can get it to go, running to your car...putting it in your large thermos cup so that it'll stay warm while you're doing all the things that keep you so very, very busy. Or you can stop, you can sit and drink it with someone, someone who is absolutely in need of someone to talk to, someone to listen to them, to hear their story, to care. There is a greater ministry there than I think people realize. I talked to M for a few precious moments on my last day and I saw in her the frustration and discouragement that I have felt many times, the idea that "this just isn't enough"...but seeing it in her made it easier for me to see the lie in that...for I have seen the importance of all the time given by these people-the difference it has made in the lives they have given themselves to...so often we are worried about what we're going to say...what we're going to do...but today just try to listen....
Listen, and I promise you'll get past all the walls that people put up to hide their pain, their shame, their fears...you'll get past it to where they keep their hopes, their dreams and their desires for something More.

So, I am sad to leave my Coffee House. The job that I prayed for in Texas, the job that God got for me, a place that I thought was just to pass the time till Brett got home-but turned into a place where I learned so much about....Coffee.

How will I choose to drink it in the future, with I take it to go and "run"...or will I sit a while?


* The title of this post is dedicated to Emily who left me a message on my cell phone ( some time during my migraine coma) that Brooke Fraser is finally being played on American Radio... terribly exciting news!