Cream in my coffee.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend asked me how I'm doing with my crazy life this semester.  I shrugged, not sure how else to describe it.  When he told me I didn't look tired, I laughed.  I felt tired.  "Maybe you've just never seen me when I'm not tired," I joke, with an air of seriousness that is a bit alarming.

Yesterday, I realized that he was right.  I didn't look tired then.   But by nine in the morning,  I looked at my face in the mirror, and saw tired.   I arrive at my home on the fourth floor of the library early. The lights turn on, waking up to my movement as I walk between the shelves, taking the longest possible route too my "favourite" desk.  It's the right shape, one of only a few on this floor that allow me to glance out the window, and there is an outlet ( a rare commodity in our aging library).  I like to look at old, dusty books on my way to my spot.  Classics that I've never read, and maybe never will, but even just from their smelling, fading threaded covers, I have some level of appreciation for them.

I settle in, once in a while hearing the movements of the other two people, also enjoying the morning solitude of this place.

My face feels warm.  My skin feels heavy, like it's pulling my eyes down.  My eyes feel sticky, glassy, and even the world in front of me looks tired as it's revealed through my glazed vision.

I take a sip of coffee.  The same coffee I promised myself I'd never drink, and was so convinced that even University wouldn't make me indulge in.  I know it doesn't wake me up at all, but I cling to the hope that it might.  I limit myself, fighting cravings for it.  If I've admitted defeat in the not-drinking-it battle, I'm definitely not going to be one of those girls that needs her  coffee every morning.
Today I give in.  And I enjoy the smell of it, it smells awake.  Yes, I like coffee.  But some mornings, it's like drinking a bear hug.  It's cozy and warm and lovely, it gets you going, and maybe even smiling...and as wonderful as it is, sometimes it's not so enjoyable.  I remember feeling crushed in my dad's arms...but I'd never say no to another, no matter how much it hurt my ribs.  The coffee seems to poison the back of my throat, and I can taste it all day.  Sometimes I think this makes me even more tired.

Two hours later, I get up to walk around, and realize that the library has filled without me noticing.  I'm glad I noticed the vibrant red popping out of little maple leaves this morning.  I'm glad that as I waited at the bus stop with other early risers, coffee tumblers in hand, eyes just as glazed as mine searching for  the bus to take us downtown, I could each person's breath, as my own disappeared in front of me.

I didn't notice the library waking up, and I didn't really notice myself waking up either.  Or maybe not waking up, but puttering along, brain fooled by the sun into energy.  It's October.  The leaves are changing colour.  The day gone by, I sit on a patch of grass outside the church sanctuary.  The bottom of my shoes, the bottom of my laptop, and the sweater I'm sitting on painted by the earth beneath me.
With all the midterms, assignments, thanksgiving preparations, ministry meetings, and the excitement of having our apartment sprayed for bugs once again...I'm so thankful for the peace of the cooling air this evening, the joy that will come as my voice blends with the voices of some youth who I cherish, singing Praise to the one who holds all things together.

And even if it takes a coffee to get me out of my cozy bed in the morning, I love the place He has me in.  Especially when there's cream: a thick, smooth, and swirling light in the darkness.