I realized something insanely funny about myself and coffee recently–apparently, I have awful depth perception.

Coffee cups only have a certain capacity–sooooo what I tend to do it use its entire volume for coffee, and then expect there to be room for milk and honey.
The result is–you guessed it–a really hot mess (literally).  I spill it while I’m stirring it, and then I try to take it back to the table and spill it even more.  Or, I try to take a quick drink to get some out of it and immediately scorch my tastebuds.

If anybody hasn’t guessed this analogy yet, or if you don’t know me very well, I’ll clue you in a little–my life is absolutely the same way.  My tendencies run toward filling my life to capacity and then adding more and more until I can’t move without something spilling all over me.  I fill myself literally to overflowing, and it always ends up hurting me. And for a really long time, I spent a ton of effort praying for God to take one of my expectations away, to tell me what to quit, to explain why I couldn’t do anything right.

What happened yesterday was absolutely weird–my thought process switched.  Instead of praying for something to lighten up, I prayed for a bigger capacity to serve.

To simplify–instead of praying for some of the coffee to disappear, I prayed for a bigger coffee cup.

It’s an amazing revelation, really, and a humbling one.  St. Francis of Assisi had a similar prayer that’s become quite famous (read it here), and I can honestly say I’ve never made sense of the words til now.

My challenge for you guys is to change your mindset, even just a little. I’m not saying to start completely expending yourself constantly and never take a moment for your own reflection (even Jesus went to the wilderness to pray, duh), but if we change the scope of the issue we might find that we have a bigger cup than we thought.

If you are constantly anxious about things taking up space and capacity in your life, you’ll find yourself making a mess a lot more often.  Looking at things from the perspective of making the cup bigger, though–you’ll find opportunities to expand, to breathe, and to really enjoy what you’re doing.

Throw the world off your shoulders for a moment, enjoy the moment.  Don’t worry about what’s to come.
Make the cup bigger.