Many of you remember my post “God Asked Me To Give Up Coffee”. I must say, until I looked up the post just now for the hyperlink, I had no idea it has been almost a year since I first gave up coffee. Actually, it’s been almost exactly one year ago. (You might want to start with that post if this post is to make any sense at all.)
The entire thing has morphed into I don’t know what. It started as prayer about a certain situation. Once the situation seemed resolved I thought it was time to go back to drinking coffee. So, one day I brewed a pot.
However, when I went to drink the coffee I felt that tugging in the pit of my stomach. (Some people say they feel a tugging on their heart, but I feel it in the deep pit of my stomach. I call it a gut feeling.) It still wasn’t right for me to drink coffee. “Why God? Why?” I felt the answer wash over me in a thought, “I do not have to explain Myself to you. I need you to trust Me and obey Me.” I threw out the coffee. If there is anything I’ve learned in my short 30 years on earth, it’s to trust and obey God when He speaks.
We can call that moment a victory. I made the coffee, but didn’t drink it. I wish I could say that has been true for the entire year. This is not the case. About 3 months ago I started trying to figure out why God would just take away my coffee for the rest of my life. At first I thought, “Well, God must be helping me with my iron deficiency.” (I have had a low iron count since birth. It’s my normal, but it looks bad on paper. Coffee and tea supposedly deplete the body of iron.) I just thought it was for my health in that way. Then, after several months without caffeine I noticed that I felt really good. From the time I woke up until I went to bed I felt good. I had no problem staying up all night on my flights oversees and I never experienced jet lag on this side of the world or that. I thought, “Oh, God must be helping me to be my best for work.” The craziest thought I had was that I had some secret illness that coffee would cause to worsen but as long I stayed away from coffee I would never know I was sick and I would lead a perfectly normal life. I never said this out loud because I have been referred to as a hypochondriac, and I detest that title. So, Jason and I did some research about the health risks and benefits of coffee. When consumed moderately, it has lots of positives and only one real negative – depleting the body of iron. Based on our research I convinced myself that coffee is good for you and that I was robbing my body of its benefits by not drinking it. So, I fixed myself some coffee. I took one drink and had to pour it out. I felt so guilty. It’s not the kind of guilty that you feel as a kid when you eat something you shouldn’t…well maybe it is. I just felt that awful churning in my gut that this wasn’t right. So, I poured it out again. About two weeks ago was my last hang up. I just out and out fixed myself some coffee and drank it. I fixed some the next day and after about two sips I knew I was disobeying God, so I poured it out again. Then, yesterday I was on a flight home from Houston. I had the thought that it would be nice to get a cup of coffee on my way home and I felt nothing. I didn’t feel the “I need you to trust me on this” feeling that I always got when debating a cup of coffee. I started asking the Lord if it was okay to drink coffee and there was a weightlessness with my thoughts. Normally, when I thought about coffee there was a heavy feeling that came with it. The heaviness was gone. I felt free to drink a cup of coffee. Still leery of myself I decided to continue praying about it. I prayed about it last night and again this morning. Nothing. So, this morning I made myself some coffee and I have been enjoying it guilt free.
Now that I am on the other side I wonder about the coffee fast to which God called me. At this point I believe it was so that I would be in practice at hearing His voice and trusting it as such. Some things came up this past week that could have a dramatic effect on mine and Jason’s lives and on my career. I had to make a snap decision, but I knew the voice of God against the voice of reason. I choose the thing that makes the least amount of sense because it is what God, through my gut, was telling me to do. Jason and I are now at His mercy to work out the future and the details as we have zero control of the outcome. We are both very comfortable with our decision because we trust that God always wants what’s best for us. It’s just up to us to take the path He lays out for us.
I still don’t know if the coffee fast truly started as prayer for another person, or if I just assumed it was for that person since it started while I was spending a great deal of time praying for the person. It’s neither here nor there. What does matter is that through my coffee fast I have remained very practiced at hearing God’s voice. So, when I needed to make a very important decision very quickly I knew God’s voice immediately. One year without coffee was definitely worth that.
Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV)
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
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