Ever receive a gift that is wonderfully practical, something you love, but essentially something you can’t use without something else? A few years ago I received just that sort of gift from my mother-in-law. She and her husband had gone to Hawaii for vacation and she sent me some coffee beans from one of the islands. I love coffee! My husband hates it; says that it’s poison, but he puts up with me drinking it. We’ve mastered the morning routine of holding our breath while lightly kissing (sometimes only a cheek kiss with breath still held), and I do my best to never ask him to make it or bring it to me. I’m actually a bit afraid of how it would turn out if he decided to make me a pot.
While the coffee beans went over very well with me, Ken (my hubby) just shook his head stating that he needed to tell his mom to stop trying to poison his wife. Ken loves to find scripture that applies to everyday life, and he found one to apply to my habit of drinking coffee: Mark 16:17-18 (NIV) “And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons; the will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” Ken says that he knows I’m a believer because I can drink coffee and still have a pulse (it races with too much, but that’s a blog for another day).
While the gift was much appreciated (on my part) and was completely practical, I put the bag in the cupboard because I essentially couldn’t use it. They were beans… I had no grinder. It was a happy gift, but a sad event. In any early marriage, money is generally something that gets in the way; causes arguments. We haven’t had a lot of those, but justifying the expense of my coffee grounds to a non-coffee drinker was already difficult. How was I to justify the expense of a coffee grinder? Like most addicts of coffee, I would find a way. I just had to try that coffee!
It became an obsession! Every time I would go to our one and only Wal-Mart, or venture to our Fred Meyers, I would check the prices of coffee grinders. I even toyed with the idea of asking Ken to get it for me for our anniversary. I didn’t because I had my sights set on new dishes. I couldn’t ask for a grinder for my birthday… I received the coffee beans for Christmas and my birthday is in October. It was too long of a wait for the aromatic beans.
I kept purchasing regular coffee grounds, but my joy of the first cup each morning seemed to wane. Oh, but if I could only have those beans ground up and fresh water filtered through them, then I would really have a good cup of coffee. But I was stuck with what I started to consider as old coffee. I’m so cheap (Ken is worse) that even my old coffee was always bought on a sale. How could I go out and buy a grinder that wasn’t on sale? Then my mind locked on a justification.
If I bought a grinder, then I wouldn’t have to spend money on new old coffee because I had a huge bag of new, new coffee! In the long run, I would be saving us money! As much as this new justification should have given me a fresh freedom to buy my coffee grinder, I still took a few trips to Wal-Mart before I settled on one. I was so proud of my find! It wasn’t the cheapest, but the box even boasted of the different things it could be used for. Coffee grinding was just one of the ways it could be used. It could also be used to grind other things; things that Ken might like. Of course I knew in the back of my mind that once it was tainted with my coffee beans, Ken would never touch it, but I was grasping at straws.
I brought it home with the speech all worked out in my mind of how to explain the practicality with Ken. I shouldn’t have bothered. Instead of seeking an explanation, asking the cost, or anything along those lines, Ken shrugged and chuckled. He chuckled! He said that if it took me 4 months to make a $20 purchase, he didn’t need to worry about it.
All of my planning and calculating, all of the stress I had gone through for the purchase was a waste. While Ken doesn’t see coffee as the best thing for his wife, he doesn’t want me to go through so much stress. God is the same way. God may not approve of some of the things we say, do or think, but He also doesn’t want us to stress out over our mistakes. We shouldn’t stress out over it because God’s already taken care of it. If He wanted us to continue stressing out over every misstep we take, He wouldn’t have sent His son. He would have said, “Let them stress over it,” but instead He made a way. All we need to do is believe, repent, and rest in Him.
In the end, I discovered (once again) that my husband values my happiness more than he values $20 and loves me more than enough to put up with my bad breath and coffee drinking addiction. While savoring that first cup of coffee to start your day, remember that God values you more than anything else He created… even coffee.
