A challenge for you!

         I have a challenge for us. I am going to try this with you. I should add the word"again", because I tried my challenge yesterday and failed miserably. It is so much harder than it sounds.

         Make it one full hour today without casting judgement on or about anyone.

         Clear your mind and find mental rest in not judging anything that anyone may say, what you read on social media, a text you may receive or just day to day interaction with people that you encounter. Absolutely no judging.

        Now if you catch yourself judging, and my guess is that you will, just clear your mind again. perhaps there is a verse you can recite or a song, but remove judgement as it may come and replace it with something constructive.

       I'm going to silently say, " I will greet this day with love in my heart", which is a line from a favorite book by Og Mandino. Whatever works for you.

       Please send your feedback. I'm curious if this exercise is even possible. I asked my daughter to try this yesterday and her response was, " Oh  Mom, I have tried that before and it is impossible."

       Is it? Can you do it? I really want to know how we do in transforming our minds. My wish is that as I spend less energy thinking and judging other people and things, I will be left with a refreshed body, mind and spirit and perhaps an extra dose of energy for something far more positive and constructive.

Romans 12:2   

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  

                                           “How to Change the World”

Happy Friday! It is gorgeous out today. The sun is shining in a soft manner, gentle enough to glisten and warm us while cool breezes keep us from feeling stale or stagnant. It is beautiful; this day that God has blessed us with. I am thankful.
         I have a question for you on this amazing, refreshing day. A little thought to ponder while you eat ice-cream and enjoy the warm sunshine on your face. …”How can we change the hearts of people hurting in a fallen and broken world?”

         Here is "my" answer to this question and a glance at my up-coming book “A Journey through Poetry with the Coffee therapist”…….

"How to Change the World”

                                                               .

When people hurt me I cry.

When people point fingers and attack, I hurt.

I feel anger and confusion and it is challenging 

not to mirror what is being projected onto me.

It is hard to see my faults 

when I feel wronged or accused.

When people hurt me I cry.

Today someone showed love and compassion to me.

They looked beyond the wrongs 

and imperfections and loved me.

This made me soften!

It made it all too easy for me to see my faults.

When people show true love it makes me cry.

My soul opens up and I am overwhelmed with peace.

This is so powerful.

When people love there is a power 

that conquers all hate.

This power brings harmony, grace and peace.

This power overcomes all.

This power saves all.

This power delivers all from evil and despair.

When people love me I cry.

So, do you need someone to see themselves?

Embrace their faults?

Do you need someone to recognize their own wrongs?

Show them love!

When people love me it makes me cry.

∞

To Listen or talk, that is the question…..

If you are really honest with yourself, what would you rather do, talk or listen?

Mine is talking. I want to talk and would prefer if everyone else would listen and even better if they agree with everything I say!

Right?.........”Rolling your eyes yet”?

I think this is probably true of most of us, so this presents a problem. We all want to talk, so who is going to listen?

Daily I experience this in my shop. A customer really wants to talk and they just want someone to listen. They usually don’t even want feedback as much as they just want to talk and feel that someone is actually interested, cares and is truly listening.

Honestly, this gets HARD, this listening thing!

But I just realized as my sweet customer just left after talking, and talking and talking some more, which I had to really focus and train my brain to just stop for a moment and listen.

I mean, even if we have to think of this as a gift that we are giving someone, whatever feeds our ego. But, we really need to practice the discipline of talking less and actually listening more.

It feels good when someone truly, honestly listens to you. So, I encourage us to practice this discipline today. Wrap it up in a box with a bow if you must, but give this gift today. The gift of caring enough to look someone in the eyes, engage and actually stop and listen to them.

Do this with self-less motivation and you may be surprised at the gift that you get back in return! Happy Monday!

It’s Saturday morning and soon I will be heading to my funky little coffee shop, as I have 15,222 times before in the last five and a half years that I have been the owner/operator/CEO/coffee therapist.

I sit here by a warm little fire this morning sipping coffee and writing. TODAY I am giving myself the luxury of actually trying to count the days that I have faithfully gotten up, gotten dressed, and left my warm home and sweet family to serve people at The Shop Downtown! And I use the word luxury, because I rarely sit around on the couch in my home and relax. I’m always off to the shop or just coming home from the shop and needing to do something else! Life+busy=Me………

I seem to have a bit of a UN –thankful tone, and that is not true. I am extremely thankful for my little funky coffee shop and the miracle that God has provided so many interesting and wonderful people every day, day in and day out for me to serve. But I am finding myself tired!

I pray today for new vision, new fresh divine appointments or perhaps the thing I need the most is a fresh perspective.

Someday's, “and it is OK to admit”, we just need a little excitement and an energized heart and mind. I’m praying for this today!

………..And now I am excited to go to my shop, because I know that God answers prayer and promises the desires of our hearts. Wow, what do you think he has in store for me today? What do you think he has in store for you? Let’s get moving and find out!

The Coffee Therapist

Good morning, I will begin blogging again starting today. I am The Coffee Therapist. I own a small coffee shop in the small town of Schulenburg, Texas...population 2700. A lot has happened since my last blog about 4 years ago and I am very excited to begin my journey once again with you and inspirational thoughts.
I will be posting things that happen and inspire me from the small, funky little coffee shop that I own and operate. There is never a dull moment and God arranges divine appointments almost daily in this inspired, fun, quirky little place in the middle of no-where. I hope you will enjoy this journey with me and follow along. Happy Wednesday!

The girl and a car

She walked in and quickly asked for a coffee. I asked her if she was hungry and would like something to eat and she said,

“I don’t know, maybe.”

She seemed tired and much likes someone who had been, or was on a long journey. She was a girl and a car and a long journey she was most definably on.  I went back to begin preparing her coffee and found myself extremely excited with anticipation and intrigue on getting to know her story.

This girl and a car, as she so referred to herself on her blog site, was the most interesting part of my day.

She was from Northern Maine and had recently graduated from NYU with a degree in journalism and communication and left New York for the adventure of a life time, a major road trip. She was traveling alone, just this girl and her car, well now she was anyway. She had a travel companion but that companion recently flew back home, to get back to her job. She was only allowed two weeks off, unlike the girl and her car, which had a seasonal job of sorts and was allowed all winter off. In Maine winter lasts almost all the way through May. Here in Texas, it must seem like summer. It was an amazingly beautiful April day in Schulenburg Texas and in walked the girl and her car into The Shop Downtown. She had been traveling on I10 with her next destination to be Louisiana and detoured off the Interstate in a small little town called Schulenburg, where she also found a girl in a shop named Christine that also writes and was just starting a new blog.

Was it a Coincidence?

 I don’t think so.

The night before I had woke up around 2:00 a.m. and had heavy on my heart to start writing, “blogging if you will”, the interesting people that God seems to bring into The Shop Downtown.

I knew that I had to start this immediately, but my intentions are always fairly good, and somehow life just seems to distract me. However, this day was different, because the obvious was so obvious that I could more likely fallen off the face of the Earth then not been obedient and write. So, write I am.

Her story, this girl and a car, is pretty simple. She is young, vivacious and just set off to the explore the nation, and she could just leave, so she did.

“FREEDOM!”

 Now, how she ended up in my small coffee shop in the middle of nowhere,

“ No Target having”, Schulenburg, Texas, now that was God!

 He brought her in; I am completely convinced of it. She was on a journey, just like I am on a journey and he used our two journeys to encourage one another.           

We talked for hours. We asked questions and shared our love for writing. When I asked her the question,

 “Are you a writer?”

 She answered the same way I would have, she laughed and said, “I would like to call myself a writer, but don’t know if I should.”

I am not sure what this meeting meant, but I like to call it a divine appointment. I don’t know if I will ever see the girl and a car again, but I do know that she made an impact on me. I began to write, that night, I began to write this, this simple little blog about the day the girl and a car came into The Shop Downtown.

Again, I don’t know what it means, but I do know that the chance meeting that day moved something in my spirit that had fallen asleep and I began to write again.

We are all on this miraculous journey and we are all connected in one way or another and if we will stay open to the voice of God and the strange ways that He may choose to communicate to us, it is an exciting adventure, fun and exciting!

So, today I close with the simple advice;

“stay open to divine appointments that may be planned for you, for it will be in these simple appointments that you may truly hear the voice of God and travel further towards your destination.”  

We are all on a journey and all need to take a road trip once in a while, whether it is hopping in our cars and taking off, or merely sitting in a shop and taking a journey with a young girl for a few hours as you visit sitting in a small coffee shop in a small town in the middle of nowhere.            

Our Awesome God!

October 6, 2010

I found myself extremely ill just a few days ago. However, the “whatever” I had was stay in bed; not getting up to do anything, bad! Yet, I could not stay in bed and of course, I had everything to do, like teach children’s church, two fundraiser dinners back to back, be a mom, and be a wife.

I was to say the least, very distracted and focused on me, me, and me.  I always seem to leave God out of my focus when I’m ill and this is clearly when I should be completely focused on Him. Maybe, I would have received a miracle healing and not have had to cook 5 million pounds of green beans with a 102 fever!

But I was distracted. I will even admit, reasonably so. Tonight I found my Awesome, Amazing God, just waiting patiently like the perfect gentleman that He will always prove to be. I had put the girls to bed and was walking out to put my laundry in the dryer. The laundry room is in a room adjacent my garage, which is a cute coble stone walk from the back door of my kitchen. My house was built in 1938, and I love it!

I had my arms filled with some items that had been overlooked in the dryer as I started my journey back in the house and I looked up. It was a crisp, cool, budding of fall evening and the stars were everywhere. They were bright, vibrant, twinkling and I could not stop myself from traveling to the center of the yard, looking up, laundry in hand, and singing to God.

“Our God is an awesome God He reigns from heaven above, with wisdom, power and love our God is an awesome God!"

I stood there in my yard, cool breeze, laundry and I raspy, sore voice and looked up singing out to our God!

Call me crazy, nutty or weird, but this is what it is about. I mean, at the end of the day, this is where we need to be, at the foot of His heavenly throne completely blown away at His awesome splendor.

I pray that each and every one of you will experience God and the worship of our mighty God in a new and exciting (maybe out of your comfort zone) way.

I love you, and God bless!    

  

No matter what, I'm just gonna love You!

God does not allow anything to come into our life that does not first go through His hands.

This is a quote from a song and WOW does that line bring comfort!

The author of this song goes on and says, “I have decided that no matter what, I am just gonna love you.”

This is exactly the place that we need to come to in our walks with the Lord. The realization that whatever it is in your live and whatever the pain may be, God has at some point allowed that thing or circumstance into your life.

He has a plan and reason and we just need to rest in His peace and love Him!

Today say, “No matter what I am just gonna love Him!”

Romans 8:28

We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the plans I have for you declares The Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.  

Do you need a miracle?

Ok, it is 4:35 in the morning and God will absolutely not let me continue in slumber. He used an approaching middle aged bladder and two ducks, who would not quit quacking at my back door to wake me up to write this one, so He must have something really important that He wants to encourage me to write. First, I must add, the ducks are in my backyard and I live in town not out in the country, but that is an entirely different story I will save for another time. I know anyone out there reading this that knows me is smiling and thinking, “Christine, Christine………..”   

Well, back to it! Yes, all joking aside, God did prompt me to share something very specific this glorious morning.

DO YOU NEED A MIRACLE?

Do you believe miracles still happen? Have you forgotten that God still does miracles? I must confess, I do not usually ask for a miracle. I pray and present request to God, but very seldom do I come straight out in total and complete weakness and ask, “God, this is going to take a complete miracle. I believe you are the God of miracles and I ask according to your good and perfect will for a complete and total miracle to happen.”  

I sat on my bed a couple of days earlier in the same spot I was when Squeaky and Quacky, not so gently went to work for the Lord this morning in waking me up, and said in total frustration, “I don’t know what I am expecting to happen, a total miracle? It is going to take a total miracle for this to work out!”  I said this in vain and it was not a prayer to my Lord, and for this I am truly sorry, because a miracle is exactly what He delivered. The Lord brought me a peace that surpasses all understanding.  This peace was the power and strength of the Holy Spirit. The next day I began to pray and actually ask God for a miracle. I knew there was going to be one even before the evidence showed up, because the power and peace of the Holy Spirit was so strong in my heart and mind. I was at total peace resting in the will of God, whatever that turned out to be. This was the first part of the miracle, which was enough. But, God did not stop there.

He delivered a full blown, shock and awe miracle that only He could deliver and I got in bed last night and went to sleep. How could I? This is why I was awoken this morning earlier than I would have liked, because I am on God’s schedule, He is not on mine, Amen! He reminded me I need to shout, praise and remind everyone out there reading this right now…

“OUR GOD IS A GOD OF MIRACLES AND HE WANTS TO DO ONE IN YOUR LIFE TOO!”

My prayer this morning is that you will truly hear this and believe. God is an amazing, awesome, powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent Lord. He wants to, through His son Jesus, receive your request and by the power of The Holy Spirit infuse a complete and total miracle in your life.  Ask for a miracle!         

"I apologize, I was wrong."

Why is it hard to admit when we are wrong? Is it a sign of weakness that we make mistakes or a sign of strength, showing we are human and secure enough to admit it? I personally mess up all the time. I could spend a lifetime apologizing for a wrong attitude, misjudgments or lack of discernment and it gets frustrating! I find myself, most of the time, just wanting to be right. I want it to be someone else’s fault. I want to be the innocent protagonist.


I do spend a lot of wasted time walking around in self-righteousness; void of my connection to God.

I wonder, “God, where are you? Why do I not feel your presence?’

I strive and search for Him, sometimes giving in and just ignoring His absence for as long as I can survive in my indignation without Him. (This is not long!) Then I stop, quiet myself before the Lord and ask the question I don’t really want to hear the answer too, “God, show me what you see in me.” , and I can finally begin to feel His presence. God begins to show me things I have been refusing to recognize, like pride, anger, fear, jealousy and many other un-mentionable things.

Once I recognize my mistakes and begin to ask for forgiveness, admitting my faults; I feel God all around me. I must shrink for there to be any room for Him to enter. I notice, as I admit my mistakes and shrink down to proper size, God grows and is elevated back to His proper size, and then it all just clicks! He is alive, present, active and moving in my life. He is elevating me, growing me, surrounding and holding me. This is where I am strong and secure.

Why is it such a struggle to admit our faults? The longer and harder we hold on to our need to be right, the longer we suffer and face everything on our own. So, today, right now, ask God to show you your faults show you your mistakes and do not be afraid to see them. Admitting your weak will only give you strength. Opposites attract and being weak in the beautiful hands of your Savior will infuse you with un-surmountable strength.

Colossians 2vs13

You were spiritually dead because of your sins, God made you alive with Christ.