Spilled Coffee and Healing Hearts

Eighteen days out now, and I’ll be honest—my words feel about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. I’ve tried jotting things down on scraps of paper, muttering to myself in the truck, even pacing around the kitchen with a half-empty cup of cold coffee.

Still, nothing comes close to easing the hurt folks are carrying. And truth be told, I can’t seem to patch up my own heart either.

Grief has this way of sticking to you, like burrs after walking through a dry field. You brush some of them off, but a few manage to cling in places you can’t quite reach. It doesn’t matter if you’re strong, faithful, or the kind who jokes through funerals—you still find yourself tugging at that ache in the middle of the night.

I’ve noticed that everyone seems to handle it differently. Some folks are angry, stomping around, and blaming anybody within shouting distance.

Others go quiet, like they’ve misplaced their voice. And then there are the ones who keep baking casseroles, because when words fail, food doesn’t.

I call that love in a Pyrex dish.

Me? I write.

I keep thinking maybe I’ll stumble across a sentence that acts like a salve. Something folks can rub on their sore hearts and feel just a little better. But most of what I scribble looks like the notes of a distracted sixth-grader—half-finished thoughts, arrows pointing in every direction, and doodles of stick men fishing.

It hit me yesterday that maybe the reason I can’t find “the right words” is because there aren’t any, at least not from me. Words alone can’t fix the kind of hole left behind when someone’s life gets taken so suddenly.

But presence can. Prayer can. A simple phone call can.

Sometimes just sitting beside somebody and saying, “Yeah, I’m hurting too” is the closest thing we get to holy ground.

I learned this lesson the hard way one morning. I stopped by a little diner, ordered my usual, and the waitress, who’s as cheerful as a bird at sunrise, looked worn-out.

I asked if she was okay. She shook her head, and tears started pooling before she could stop them.

I froze, because I sure didn’t know what to say. Then, right on cue, I spilled my coffee—half a cup right into my lap.

Ouch!

She laughed. I laughed.

And for a moment, her shoulders eased. I didn’t solve her problem.

I didn’t preach a sermon. I just managed to be human at the right time, and maybe that was enough.

That’s the thing about grief. It makes us think we have to come up with grand answers, some thunderbolt of wisdom that’ll straighten everybody’s spine. But sometimes what’s needed is just to be clumsy enough, silly enough, or so tender that someone else remembers life isn’t all sorrow.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

He didn’t say how or when that comfort comes. Sometimes it arrives like a hymn that stirs your memory.

Sometimes it’s in the silence of prayer. And now and then, it comes in the form of spilled coffee and a shared laugh.

So here we are—four days out. Still hurting.

Many of us are struggling to find footing on a floor that won’t stop shifting. I don’t have a tidy bow to tie around this pain.

I don’t even have enough words to patch up my own. But I do know this–God has a way of showing up in the cracks, in the awkward pauses, in the small kindnesses we clumsily give each other.

Maybe that’s the best we can do right now. Let ourselves hurt, let others hurt, and keep showing up anyway—with prayers, casseroles, laughter, and the occasional coffee stain.

Because healing doesn’t happen in a rush, it’s slow, like dawn sneaking up over the mountains, bit by bit, until one morning you realize the dark has lifted enough to see the road again.

And when that day comes—and it will—we’ll walk it together.