I created this website nearly 2 years ago. I was feeling the desire and urge to write, but I had little inspiration on what exactly I should write about. Everything I would type out just didn’t feel right so I never published any of it. Yet I kept getting the words “I want you to write”, every time I would talk to God about it. There are many things I could have written about, that I do really want to share, but where to begin? I didn’t just want this to be a diary of all the good and hard things. My life has been a series of really blessed and really unfortunate events but I know that is the case for many people, if not all of us, right? I can joke about certain people being “God’s favorite” and I certainly have the moments where I begin to question if God might have it out for me or others I know who have really been through the wringer, but I know deep down that neither of those are true.
The truth is, we all experience hardship in one way or another. And I truly believe there is purpose in our pain, purpose in the very individualized ways we suffer or succeed. I know the times I have really been in the thick of it, it has been extremely lonely. And the words and stories of those who have been there (whether it is a similar situation or just through hard things in general) are truly a life-line, a voice when I have none and a way to be felt or heard without me having to say a thing.
And that is what I hope and pray Need More Coffee Please can be for someone else.
Before Cisco had his stroke I had become very bottled up with any problems or issues we were going through and I rarely, if at all, shared anything good or bad with anyone who wasn’t family or my best friend. We had really just began to emerge from a few years of becoming fairly reclusive – why we became that way is a story for another day, but suffice to say I wasn’t very keen on sharing. Especially on social media. I don’t say this as some kind of badge of honor or anything, I used to be all about sharing (probably too much haha)! But the minute we found out he’d had a stroke, all I knew was I needed every person we’d ever met to begin praying for him.
When I began posting his updates I was floored by the response. I will never get over it. The amount of people we knew, had never met, entire churches and Bible study groups from all over the world that were praying for him and invested in his outcome, was astounding. It is one of my favorite things to tell him now, because it never ceases to amaze both of us how the church came together for him. I know it restored much of my faith in the church and I have heard from others that it did for them as well.
As I enter a season of sharing a lot more of our lives and story than I probably ever have, I pray it can be used to help someone else in their journey. Life is not easy. But we are truly never alone, no matter how much it can feel like it sometimes. I have a hard time reaching out and especially when I need to the most – maybe you do too, especially if you’ve been hurt or burned by doing so in the past. But if I’ve learned one thing recently, it is that Jesus wants to heal and sometimes (maybe often times) He wants to do that through the very means we were once wounded by.
