My Addiction

When I feel I’m crashing, when I still have the day left of dashing;

When I have no more strength, when I am done before day’s length—

Coffee?

Photo Credit: Kevin Wild

Here is where I run into problems.  Sometimes, Jesus supplies me with energy I didn’t even know was possible.  Busier and busier I am, though I try and break up my daily activity with breaks when I can sit down for a moment.  This is super hard.  Every day, I run into this problem.  If I do anything that requires activity for a period of time, this is a problem.  There is more to the reasons of my daily loss of energy before the day is done, but I digress.  All this leads to the topic of this post: addiction.

My addiction is coffee.  Not the drink-every-moment, gotta-have-it addiction.  Well, not as bad as some people in the overly-caffeinated society of America. Since I discovered coffee as a freshmen in college (Bio 120 is what did it—sciences are just not my thing), I have found that caffeine is a drug that can give me energy out of nowhere (as I’ve never been a pop drinker).  My biggest struggles are when I rely on COFFEE for energy instead of JESUS.  But, it feels like Jesus is unpredictable.  Sometimes he supplies me with this miraculous energy, and sometimes I struggle extra-much.  I cry out to him some nights as I walk back from night class, but my walking is painfully, horribly, terrible.  But coffee?  It gives me energy all the time (well, mostly).  I guess I have found its flaw, too.  Sometimes coffee gives me this “false energy,” when I feel like I have energy to walk across campus and be on my feet practicing for an hour, but my body tells me otherwise.  I’m writing this post not because I want to share my victory over this addiction, but because I am still stuck in it.  The Bible says that “if  your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away.  It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into eternal fire” (Matthew 18:8).  Well, I know I will not be thrown into eternal fire, as I have trusted Christ with my life and made him Lord of my life.  However, how can I honor him with all things?  Making coffee into an “idol” that I turn to instead of God is NOT honoring to him.  I have tried again and again to stop drinking coffee, but it is so hard, especially when the addiction is acceptable to the world and encouraged everywhere I go.

There was a time when I drank coffee when I had quiet times, and spent my time drinking coffee conversing with the Lord.  I’d tell him what was on my mind, and dive into the word.  When I would drink coffee and not have the Bible on hand, I would spend the time in prayer, talking with and thinking about God.  I honestly don’t know how to get back into the habit on my own.  Unfortunately, I cannot “take a moment” every time I drink coffee.  I have been trying to only drink coffee in the mornings, but I crash sometime between noon and two every day (right before or during a class).  I don’t know what to do.  I still have morning coffee with Jesus as I can, but the rest of the day?  Ahh!

“Lord, I seriously am at a loss.  I don’t know how to have energy without caffeine anymore.  Don’t let me put it in front of you, ever.  YOU are the king and the Lord of my life.  YOU sit at the throne of my life.  I thank you that there is coffee, that we may enjoy it.  I confess that it sometimes tries to sneak in and be put ahead of you, and sometimes I let it, but you are first, always.  Help me to see that and remember.  In Jesus’ name”

–Anna

 

Edit and added note (a week after posting): I am giving up coffee for lent 2013.  WHAT!?  If I can do it, you all can do anything.