The Coffee was Never About the Coffee

Sixteen years ago, I posted a simple Facebook status:

"Sippin coffee on the front porch watchin the sun rise between fourteen hour work days."

When Facebook showed it to me recently as a memory, I smiled. Then I stopped smiling.

Because I realized something. Back then, the coffee wasn't the point. The coffee was squeezed into the tiny crack between workdays. The sunrise was squeezed into the tiny crack between workdays. Life itself was squeezed into the tiny crack between workdays.

The irony is I was chasing freedom even back then. I just didn't yet recognize it.

I wasn't enjoying a morning. I was recovering from yesterday and preparing for the day ahead. At the time, I thought that was normal. I thought success looked like fourteen-hour days. I thought responsibility meant always carrying more. I thought rest was something you earned - that someday I'd finally arrive at a place where I could slow down. I just didn't know it would take sixteen years.

Today my coffee station looks ridiculous. There's a Nespresso machine from Europe., a French press inspired by a Mediterannean cruise, a grinder, a Keurig, a drip coffee maker. There are travel mugs from adventures all over the world. Basically, there's enough equipment to make a coffee purist laugh and to trip the breakers.

But standing there recently, I realized none of it is actually about coffee. It's about time. It's about choice. It's been about building a life where mornings belong fully to me.

For decades, my mornings existed to support my work. Today, my work exists to support my life. That's a very different thing. The coffee isn't fuel anymore. It's a ritual. A pause. A reminder. A celebration of something I spent years building without fully understanding what I was building.

Because the truth is, I wasn't trying to create a coffee station. I was trying to create a life.

A life where I can sit on my deck or my couch with my dogs. A life where I can read a book, study the Bible and pray before sunrise. A life where I can take a nap in the sunroom on a rainy afternoon. A life where I can travel the world and then be excited about coming home. A life where peace isn't something postponed until retirement. Most importantly, I was building a life where home feels like a destination.

The funny thing is that if you had shown me this life sixteen years ago, I probably wouldn't have wanted it. I was chasing titles, promotions, recognition, relationships. Bigger goals. Bigger responsibilities. Bigger everything. More! More! More!

What I didn't understand was that someday I would discover something much more valuable: enough.

Not enough money. Not enough success. Not enough stuff.

Just enough life.

And that turns out to be a pretty wonderful thing to sip coffee beside.