A lie cannot live.

“Winners are not people who never fail, but people who never quit.” Unknown

To all of those who have wondered at our silence; to those who have talked in whispers among each other, hiding your furtive glances at our social media pages and shaken your head at our decisions in life; 

This is Us. 

Despite what you might hear, despite what you might read or think or understand, we are here, together. 

4 years ago we were going through a very rough time in our lives. There are scars to show for it. 

But here, several years later, we are still together. We are growing together, learning, giving. 

We believe in love, we believe in redemption, we believe in each other; and because of that we know we’re in excellent hands. 

We are here raising our beautiful, talented, strong children: both of whom finished out their 2018-2019 school year in the Honor Roll, while Cherish was in the Shenandoah Valley Children’s Choir

 and Micah was in baseball tournaments and leagues. 

Micah's All Star Broadway team is getting ready to play Regionals this weekend!

We are a close little family, traveling miles and hours together for baseball tournaments, choirs, beach trips...

 coffee business and just because.


Speaking of coffee...

... and here...

These are coffee shops that we both partner in.

They are thriving, growing stores that are well known, highly rated and loved by the valley. We love our businesses, we love where we are at and we have plans to open more in the future.

We are not perfect people.

But we are here. The road we have traveled has been full of obstacles, potholes and ditches; but we are present.
Committed. Fixed. Steady. Determined.

We know there's talk.

We let them talk. We let them speculate. Connive. Assume.

"They say we're not as good as them; I say they're not as good as Him."
KB

God is at the forefront of our venture. Our aim, our goal is to stay humble, stay strong and keep our eyes focused on Him and the goals we have set in front of us.


Other people have things to say; but our story is our own. They are the author of their article; we're committing our writings to the penmanship of Him who has led us this far and has the final say in it all.

To those of you who have supported us on our journey to this day, we acknowledge you and thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. We see and talk to you almost every day, every week or month. Thank you for checking in on us, for praying and caring, and reaching out on a consistent basis.

Keep watching. Our story isn't done yet.

Best,
CC and Jenna, Micah and Cherish Matthews

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” Martin Luther King Jr. 


Citations:

https://pin.it/huf2oay4a34nif sayingspoint.com


https://youtu.be/g_nj3Q2JPVc  Musixmatch 2017


martin-luther-king-jr-quotes Hannah Hutyra 2011

Not Fearless.

Second guessing.

One of the banes of my life, seriously. All day, 'ery day. And since I'm such an analytical person, I will have argued my way around, over and under everything, at least five times before I finally make a decision to move forward. Or not, as the case may be.

Way back in the day, when I was an awkward, shy and incredibly quiet teen living in Loveland Colorado it was a little bit of a different story because that person left all the decision-making up to the people she admired; the confident, outgoing kids, because there was no way she was going to show how painfully scared she was.
Haha.. if I introduced you to the family I stayed with, they'd tell you that I'd look at the ceiling or the walls, before making eye contact with anyone for months. I'd learned to have a half-smile on my face so that people wouldn't think that I was unhappy, or figure out how much I silently begged everyone to let me stay away so that I wouldn't have to talk.
It took me around 2 hours to talk thru going to a volleyball game at a park because I couldn't make the decision to go. The day was gorgeous outside, with the Rocky Mountains towering in the background of the valley and white clouds floating lazily in a crystal blue sky on a breeze that had scented hints of crisp fall weather and red fir trees.

So no.. it wasn't that I didn't want to go. And I sat and had around 6 reasons that I could stay if I was needed at home, like dishes or laundry or walking the dog.
Long story short, I ended up going.
I had the time of my life. Who coulda guessed that one? But for me, it was a huge step for me, and a wordless agreement with God who probably laughed His head off at my shivering, scared self that I would start living with less fear every day.

I write #strongertogether on a lot of my posts, and there's a lot of history behind that tag. The story above is part of it.
There's a lot of truth behind the saying, 'Everyone has a story'. And you know, I find it so crazy that I'm out almost every day, talking to people who I've never met before, making friends, creating an atmosphere of welcome and comfort, finding out how their family vacation was, asking about their day, listening to a sad story of loss, and all this over a simple cup of coffee when several years ago, I couldn't look people in the face. It's like a wait; what?? moment for me.

Interesting fact, that glimpse into my life is one of the reasons I love coffee shops. I wanted to create a place that, no matter who you are, what you do, where you've been, you are always welcome and I will always have a moment to say hi, ask how you are, give you a smile, and do my best to make you feel welcome because I know what it's like to feel like a stranger for a long time. There's a few things that unite almost all walks of people; its usually food, and coffee. (or tea, and I actually really like a good green tea!)
Looking at where I was then, and where I'm at now sometimes I blink and am like.. say what?
But it's part of my learning to live with less fear every day.
Less fear of second guessing.
Less fear of people.

Less fear of tomorrow.

Not completely fearless;

Just less fear than yesterday.

Feeding the fish

You know.. feeding a fish shouldn't be so interesting.
The lazy, red and blue betta fish that my little girl insisted on naming Vanilla just sits in her over-sized vase of tap water and flits here and there, glaring thru the glass if you don't feed her at least several times a day.
(don't worry, she gets fed twice a day.)
For the most part, she's lazy and won't move much unless disturbed, like when little people come over and wanna click on the glass to see if she's still alive, or to watch her swim around in annoyance.

But once you drop that awesome-smelling fish food in there, 😖 she's a soldier at attention; whirls around and goes right for the food, not even caring that there's at least 1 set of eager eyes watching her come to the surface to eat. Weird thing is.. she's not picky about the food. She sits on the table where we all eat, surely she can see that there's other food in this world. (not.) 😆

But you know, it's interesting. God's got food for us, we just aren't as interested as we probably should be. We want the Gluten Free version.
Or better yet, the Atkins Diet, or the Paleo food. We obviously just can't handle the whole food yet, so we figure that the food we're given must be the wrong stuff. We want the Skim Milk please, and the Sugar Free Caramel with half the flavor!
But honestly, I can't talk. There's a lot of times where I'm in the situation where a lot of old memory verses are running thru my head and I still choose to act a fool.
Like no, I really don't have to have the last word, and I'm pretty sure it's not imperative that I'm heard on this subject, no matter how much I think about it. Sometimes I think that God puts us in situations to see how well we handled a lesson.
 (Cue the Verizon commercial dude: "Is this a test?")

It's only been in the most recent months that God's encouragement to me is; You are stronger than you think.
And you know, He's probably right.. there's been times where I am positive I can't put one foot in front of the other one for the rest of the day, and I'm just gonna sit here in the middle of the work space until closing time. But it's at those moments where I hear the line, "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Lam 3:22-23

Other times it feels a bit more down to earth. Move, or I'll make you wish you had. 
(once again, JK)
So I pull myself together one more time, find the strength to get up and go once more because He handed me some food;
... and I took it, to live to fight another day.