Morning Cuppa

I have a morning routine, as most people do. It goes like this: wake up, go downstairs and make my mug of coffee, come back upstairs, settle into my rusty-dirt-colored wingback chair and have my devotional time while the sun comes up on the hills across from our home. It's a perfect combination--view, focus on faith, coffee and sunrise--that fortifies me with a sense of well-being and hope before I walk out the door into my day.

It has not always been so. I grew up in a church that was quite conservative, frowning on the use of stimulants. "Your body is the temple of God." And so it is, and I know from experience that my spiritual well-being is enhanced when I'm living healthfully. So when I was a child, coffee and black tea were on the no-no list, and I got rather judgmental thoughts when I saw someone drinking a caffeine beverage. Such is the viewpoint of a child.

I still remember the first time I had coffee to drink. I did it on purpose. I was 13 years old and we were in the Rome airport, in transit to somewhere on a furlough. I had gotten desperately thirsty, and those Italians didn't believe in drinking fountains. I'd obtained some lira from my mom and went wandering the terminal, looking for a drink to buy. All I could find was a vending machine, and in that machine--coffee. So I got some.

As I expected, it tasted nasty. But at least I wasn't dying of thirst anymore. I confessed my actions to my mom, she looked mildly disappointed. And that was that.

Image from http://www.reelsmillbank.com/reels-blog/2015/8/18/what-makes-a-great-cup-of-coffee

Years later, in my mid-twenties, I moved to Southern California for graduate school and found that those "liberal church members" in California were drinking coffee. (You'd have to know the deep cultural suspicions in my church about Southern California church members, I suppose.) I had some coffee occasionally, and eventually built up a habit of my morning cuppa. By the time I got married and Husband viewed my love for coffee with some consternation, I was not to be dissuaded. When you marry someone you don't try to control them, Mister Man, and this is one of the areas where I am going to be a holdout.

Coffee does have its benefits for me. I have a milk allergy--not lactose intolerance, but an allergy that makes me feel like I have the flu if I have too much milk product (milk, cheese, cottage cheese, etc.). I have found that if I have a cup of coffee when I feeling the milk headache and fuzzy-brain coming on, it clears it off again. Additionally, coffee does the same thing for me that all hot drinks--tea, hot chocolate, etc.--do. There's a comfort factor that comes with drinking something hot, akin to how you feel when you get a warm hug from someone who esteems you highly.

So here I am: blog post written, sun up on the hills, ready to head out for my morning exercise, and cheery and glad to have once again started my day in my rusty-dirt-colored wingback chair and gratitude journal ... with my morning cuppa.