My Kroupa Coffee Mug

I find myself preparing for the worst, lately. Case in point: my original Kroupa coffee mug. As you can see, it is a fine piece of pottery, hand-crafted by Chris Kroupa who lives and works from his studio on Toroda Creek. I've never treasured anything quite as much as I do this mug.

It came into my possession haphazardly. It was a door prize at the 2009 Eagle Cliff Grange Christmas party. I don't know who donated it to the cause, but it was most certainly donated. Chris's wife, Nikki, told me once that it's older--maybe from the 80's. I've yet to put anything further effort toward learning about its life before me. All I know is that this vessel is part of my daily routine. And for some reason, I keep preparing myself for the day that it slips from my hand and breaks into irredeemable pieces.

I'm suddenly reluctant to write about this topic. It probably reveals too much about my true nature. Pessimistic. An ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust kind of guy. In psychology, the term for what's going on in my head is "cataclysmic thought." I've been reading a little about it lately, and sad to say...the shoe fits.

The weird thing is, my theology is almost completely the opposite. My belief in God's Grace is so all-encompassing that some Christians would probably call me a heretic. Spiritually speaking, the greatest cataclysm possible is eternal damnation. But I believe so strongly in the redemptive act of Jesus on the cross, that I do not believe in hell. Ultimately, I don't believe that Father will let us self-immolate. He knows we cannot do it on our own; He's painfully aware of our futility. I do believe that we must choose, but I'm inclined to believe that there is no deadline and we'll all see the light in the end.

My biggest challenge these days, in all my roles--teacher, father, husband, writer, son, rancher--is to find a way to infuse the peace I have as a Christian into all my human endeavors--to "live forgiven," as a professor of Tera's and mine at LBI once said. And that means letting go of the cataclysmic thoughts that I let run willy-nilly through my mind.

As for my Kroupa mug, which is what started all this, I need to switch my thinking about it, too. Rather than seeing it as something that will break someday, I need to consider it yet another symbol of all the grace and blessing in my life, for as long as I have the privileged to drink from it.