Every day can’t be french press day

I heart coffee.

It’s a well known fact. I love it like nobodies business. I’m not the person who drinks copious amounts of it, but I like good coffee and I like it every day. My husband and I were introduced to the world of french pressing several years ago, by an Alton Brown TV spot where he rode around on a motorcycle and made french press coffee out of fresh snow from the Rockies. Our thoughts ranged from “Well, isn’t that just fun!” to “Where has this been our whole lives!”

French press coffee is amazing.

The oils in the coffee beans rise to the surface of your cup. There are more layers of flavor and body in your coffee than you can imagine. The problem – it takes a lot of time and a lot of beans. It’s expensive, you have to boil the water to a perfect temperature (195-212 F depending on who you ask), so you stand there and watch it and watch it some more. You steep the beans and come back, but you need to dedicate time to savoring your delicious cup because it gets cold fast after making it at said perfect temperature.  

I love french press coffee, but the reality is, I can’t have it everyday. 

This applies to so much of life.

I want excitement and adventure. I want hyperbole. I want everyday to be fabulous, every meeting to be fantastic, every conversation to be life changing, every moment to matter and matter deeply.  

The problem is, when we expect the most from absolutely every thing, every second, every relationship:

we will always be let down.

And what is really special anymore?

French press is french press because it’s special and exceptional for that moment. It’s best served when you have time to enjoy it, over good conversation or a quiet morning of contemplation. If I had it everyday, it’s just coffee. If every day is fantastic, fantastic is just regular, and ceases being fantastic. I’m always looking to amp it up, make it more, make it bigger. Then I teach my children that this is what life needs to look like, inadvertently, but all the same – everything’s a holiday, every lunch box a masterpiece, every conversation life changing. 

I even end up needing my church to be doing more and being more, offering more. It’s never enough.

I’m never content.

I miss all the little wonderful moments of life because I spent so much time trying to make everything into an epic cup of coffee, so to say.

Contentment is probably the most underrated spiritual gift known to man. We laud leadership and vision, we are amazed by the testimony of a dramatic conversion, but contentment and people who ooze contentment is wrapped in so many other spiritual gifts, like grace and truth, and the peace that passes all understanding. It is clearly the Spirit at work.

God offers me so much in Christ Jesus. So much. But in Scripture he tells me it’s enough for each day- just enough. Not epic and not monumental, but enough.

My job is to be a vessel, to grow and to learn and to seek. Not be more, do more, and make it more.  

This school year, my goal is to bask in enough. I’m going to pray my kids off the school. I’m going to make my drip cup of coffee, and then I’m going to journal for 5 minutes thanking God for the day and asking him to be a part of it…whatever that day is, percolated, drip coffee pot, or french press. Because He made it and that’s enough.