The Story Isn't Over

“Hey lady, are you coming down to help me make coffee or not?”

It’s early morning and I open one eye to see my nine-year-old niece Devon standing over me. I'm in Atlanta for the weekend and she wants to serve her mother coffee in bed but she's not sure how to make it.

{By the way, it’s our little joke that she calls me lady when she thinks I’m being particularly bossy to her so I'm amused when she says it.}

But now it was my turn to be bossed out of bed to provide instruction for the little barista-in-training.

The minute we arrived at the loft apartment we booked for the weekend, Devon ran ahead, checking out every room and telling us how beautiful she thought it was. She said she wanted a place just like this one when she’s a grown-up.

She reminded me of myself.

When I was in fourth grade, I visited the apartment of a friend’s sister and was captivated by it. 

There was a tiny balcony where a wrought-iron table and chairs were set up just beyond the sliding glass doors. 

The closet doors looked like shutters {and even back then I had a thing for shutters} that were so different from the closet doors at my house. And it had the tiniest, cutest kitchen I’d ever seen.

I dreamed of living in an apartment just like that one when I grew up.

The future couldn’t come fast enough back then so I could get down to the business of making my dreams come true {which mostly consisted of decorating my own place}.

But at what point do we start to look in the rearview mirror and think the best might be behind us? 

Where now? What then? If not, then how?

Whether a chapter is closing, or you’re in the midst of pages bursting with action, or you’re on the brink of just beginning your story, we’re all part of a bigger story that starts and ends with God. 

I’ve seen enough pages re-written, new chapters begun and surprise endings in my own life story to know that our stories aren’t really ever over.

God’s always writing something that’s powerful and breathtaking and fathomless, a deep mystery that invites our investigation, consideration, and exploration. 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. - Ecclesiastes 3:11

There are still pages in this life-book to fill, chapters to author, scenes to script, and words to write. 

Even -- and maybe especially -- through a weekend in Atlanta, making coffee with my niece.

And that's why I know your story has new plot lines, too. Because we're all a living story.

So even though I’d like to stay in bed a little longer on my weekend away, I head to the kitchen of the apartment and make coffee with my niece. 

She carefully measures the coffee but spills some grounds in the filter, so we dump it out and start over. She waits impatiently for it to brew and tells me I’d better pour it in the mug because she's worried she'll spill it. 

She picks up the little digital camera her dad gave her and takes a picture of the coffee. 

{She’s taken her own photos during the trip --see the squirrel she captured below! -- and says she wants to make a photo album to remember the weekend.}

She pours too much cream but I send her upstairs anyway and I hear her announce to my sister that she made the coffee. 

I remember just how magnificent the feeling of a future filled with glorious and brilliant things can be.

Because sometimes I still feel that way too.

I'm having coffee with my friends at Holley Gerth's place at Coffee for your Heart. Join me there to read posts from my blogger friends!