The Mug
I sat in my wheelchair looking out the window of our room. The light poured in even though the view was just the opposite brick wall. While Kevin went to get the car, I sat with my thoughts and the last few sips of coffee. I had stayed on the wrong side of the labor and delivery floor before. Heaven and hell on one hospital floor divided down the middle by a nursery full of pink crying babies. On one side exhaustion mingled with joy and on the other heartache sucked the oxygen out of the air, forcing everyone to a whisper.
The nurse came in to make sure I had everything I needed, which of course I didn’t. My coffee was not quite gone, so she kindly winked and said to just keep the mug. It was a tiny offering in view of what I’d lost, but the contraband was a small happiness. Tiny things mattered more now than they had before.
She told me it was a heavy day and said there was a family next door that was grieving, too. She wasn’t allowed to tell, but probably their story was full of familiar horrors. Their pain was maybe mine, so I passed the nurse a small card and asked her to deliver it to the neighbor mother. I had packed my bag at home the day before and written down a song and verse on a palm sized card. I held it tightly through the night so that the words could sink down through my skin and swirl around inside in all the empty aching places and coat them with his light and hope. “Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day.” I wanted to go hold the other mother’s hand, but this would have to do.
Kevin wheeled me to the elevator with my coffee cup in hand—navy-blue plastic, short and squatty, double walled, with a nice, squarish, 3 finger wide handle. This was what I was taking home. We loaded in the van, Kevin, me, a box of tiny mementos, and my coffee mug. We drove home past all the usual businesses and all the usual cars carrying people to their usual lives. My usual was gone. I’d walked through the furnace and come out the other side with only my faith and this coffee cup intact. It was enough.
Now I knew the other side; the Lord wasn’t just good for the gifts he gave however large or small. He was good all the time, because he is. Nothing could change that. I ached and cried and cried and ached, then thanked him for his goodness and for his word of hope and for that coffee mug. Someday he would come to make it all new—my broken heart and their 20 tiny fingers and 20 tiny toes.
In honor of all those families remembering today.
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