☕ Coffee and Quiet with Derek Wolf
Get Busy Living
The morning light rests soft across her kitchen table. Steam curls from a chipped mug, rising through the quiet. The world outside is waking, but she sits still. Her phone glows beside her hand. A message from an old friend reads, I can’t wait to finally rest. When this life is over, I’ll be free.
She reads it twice. The words land heavy, like a sigh that has been waiting at the edge of every conversation lately. Everyone she knows seems to be waiting for peace, but not searching for it. It feels as if the world has agreed that the only way to be happy is to be done living.
She looks up. The sky is the faint color between blue and gray, that soft middle place before sunrise. For a moment she wonders when the shift happened, when people started treating life as the waiting room for something better. She remembers the phrase her grandmother used to say, back when she was a girl sitting on the porch. You either get busy living, or you get busy dying.
Back then it sounded like a movie line, something brave and heroic. Now it feels like prophecy.
She closes her eyes. A few years ago, she might have agreed with her friend. Life had felt endless and heavy. The same routine. The same ache. The same promises that something brighter waited on the other side of exhaustion. But one morning, after another sleepless night, she realized she had been living as if life itself were a punishment. That realization frightened her more than death ever could.
She had believed that peace was waiting somewhere else. But it wasn’t. It was waiting for her to show up here.
She opens the message thread and scrolls. Dozens of small confessions from people she loves. Each one a variation of the same song. I’m tired. I’m over it. I just want to be free. She sees it everywhere now, people treating the idea of the afterlife like a travel brochure. No deadlines. No grief. No mess. Just light and love and reunion. Heaven rebranded as escape.
She understands the pull. She really does. The world is loud and cruel. Bills, sickness, distance, noise. But there is something dangerous about believing that peace belongs somewhere else. It becomes a habit, the quiet kind that sneaks into your bones. You stop trying. You start shrinking. You mistake survival for grace. You start living like you are waiting for your own permission to stop.
She has seen it in her friends’ eyes, that glaze of half presence. The slump of shoulders in checkout lines. The hollow look of people who talk about angels but not about healing. They pray for light but sit in darkness with the curtains drawn. And every time, she wants to ask, if heaven feels real to you, why won’t you practice it here?
She remembers when she used to pray the same way, mistaking silence for surrender.
She walks to the window. The morning has found its color now, thin streaks of rose along the horizon. A neighbor’s dog barks. Somewhere a garbage truck rumbles. Ordinary life doing what it always does, moving forward.
She rests her palm on the cool glass. In her reflection she sees the small lines around her eyes, the marks of having lived. And for the first time in a while, she feels grateful for them. She whispers, almost without meaning to, if peace is possible there, it must be possible here. The words move through her like something she had always known.
She turns back toward the table. The coffee has cooled. The phone screen has gone dark. Outside, the light sharpens, brushing the world with warmth. She feels it move through her too, a quiet pulse of presence. It isn’t joy exactly, it’s clarity.
She opens the window. The air slides in, fresh and clean. The sound of birds cuts through the stillness, each note small and alive. She takes a deep breath and feels her chest expand in a way that surprises her. Maybe heaven is not waiting. Maybe it is remembering. Remembering how to feel here. How to forgive here. How to wake up and choose to keep showing up even when it is messy. She sits down again and takes a sip of the cold coffee. It tastes stronger than before, and somehow that feels right. Her phone buzzes again, another message from that same friend. Rough night. Still here though. She smiles and types back, That’s enough. Keep being here. Then she sets the phone down and watches the morning unfold through the open window. The air smells faintly of rain, as if the world is remembering how to feel again. She thinks about all the lives still being lived, all the hearts still trying. And for the first time in a long while, she feels like one of them. Alive enough to hurt. Alive enough to hope. Alive enough to matter.
The Truth Beneath
There is a story people keep telling, that peace waits on the other side, that heaven is the reward for making it through the pain. But maybe the real story is quieter. Maybe peace is what we practice until we remember we were never separate from it. Heaven is not the end of suffering. It is the end of forgetting who we are while we live. She sits in the quiet, and the world feels close. You cannot wait your way into peace. You have to live your way into it.
You will find it waiting, just behind your next thought.
Stories written in the quiet hours.
Derek Wolf.
“The Truth Beneath” Links to add to the bottom of stories
Get Busy Living
The morning light rests soft across her kitchen table. Steam curls from a chipped mug, rising through the quiet. The world outside is waking, but she sits still. Her phone glows beside her hand. A message from an old friend reads, I can’t wait to finally rest. When this life is over, I’ll be free.
She reads it twice. The words land heavy, like a sigh that has been waiting at the edge of every conversation lately. Everyone she knows seems to be waiting for peace, but not searching for it. It feels as if the world has agreed that the only way to be happy is to be done living.
She looks up. The sky is the faint color between blue and gray, that soft middle place before sunrise. For a moment she wonders when the shift happened, when people started treating life as the waiting room for something better. She remembers the phrase her grandmother used to say, back when she was a girl sitting on the porch. You either get busy living, or you get busy dying.
Back then it sounded like a movie line, something brave and heroic. Now it feels like prophecy.
She closes her eyes. A few years ago, she might have agreed with her friend. Life had felt endless and heavy. The same routine. The same ache. The same promises that something brighter waited on the other side of exhaustion. But one morning, after another sleepless night, she realized she had been living as if life itself were a punishment. That realization frightened her more than death ever could.
She had believed that peace was waiting somewhere else. But it wasn’t. It was waiting for her to show up here.
She opens the message thread and scrolls. Dozens of small confessions from people she loves. Each one a variation of the same song. I’m tired. I’m over it. I just want to be free. She sees it everywhere now, people treating the idea of the afterlife like a travel brochure. No deadlines. No grief. No mess. Just light and love and reunion. Heaven rebranded as escape.
She understands the pull. She really does. The world is loud and cruel. Bills, sickness, distance, noise. But there is something dangerous about believing that peace belongs somewhere else. It becomes a habit, the quiet kind that sneaks into your bones. You stop trying. You start shrinking. You mistake survival for grace. You start living like you are waiting for your own permission to stop.
She has seen it in her friends’ eyes, that glaze of half presence. The slump of shoulders in checkout lines. The hollow look of people who talk about angels but not about healing. They pray for light but sit in darkness with the curtains drawn. And every time, she wants to ask, if heaven feels real to you, why won’t you practice it here?
She remembers when she used to pray the same way, mistaking silence for surrender.
She walks to the window. The morning has found its color now, thin streaks of rose along the horizon. A neighbor’s dog barks. Somewhere a garbage truck rumbles. Ordinary life doing what it always does, moving forward.
She rests her palm on the cool glass. In her reflection she sees the small lines around her eyes, the marks of having lived. And for the first time in a while, she feels grateful for them. She whispers, almost without meaning to, if peace is possible there, it must be possible here. The words move through her like something she had always known.
She turns back toward the table. The coffee has cooled. The phone screen has gone dark. Outside, the light sharpens, brushing the world with warmth. She feels it move through her too, a quiet pulse of presence. It isn’t joy exactly, it’s clarity.
She opens the window. The air slides in, fresh and clean. The sound of birds cuts through the stillness, each note small and alive. She takes a deep breath and feels her chest expand in a way that surprises her. Maybe heaven is not waiting. Maybe it is remembering. Remembering how to feel here. How to forgive here. How to wake up and choose to keep showing up even when it is messy. She sits down again and takes a sip of the cold coffee. It tastes stronger than before, and somehow that feels right. Her phone buzzes again, another message from that same friend. Rough night. Still here though. She smiles and types back, That’s enough. Keep being here. Then she sets the phone down and watches the morning unfold through the open window. The air smells faintly of rain, as if the world is remembering how to feel again. She thinks about all the lives still being lived, all the hearts still trying. And for the first time in a long while, she feels like one of them. Alive enough to hurt. Alive enough to hope. Alive enough to matter.
The Truth Beneath
There is a story people keep telling, that peace waits on the other side, that heaven is the reward for making it through the pain. But maybe the real story is quieter. Maybe peace is what we practice until we remember we were never separate from it. Heaven is not the end of suffering. It is the end of forgetting who we are while we live. She sits in the quiet, and the world feels close. You cannot wait your way into peace. You have to live your way into it.
You will find it waiting, just behind your next thought.
Stories written in the quiet hours.
Derek Wolf.
“The Truth Beneath” Links to add to the bottom of stories
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