9/29/26 - Coffee, the Psalms, and a Quietly Profound Sort of Living

When I was fifteen, I started working at the coffee stand at my church. I watched my youth pastor deliver drinks, take orders, and craft lattes–and turn it into ministry. That’s where I learned coffee connects people like little else. When I was nineteen, I only set foot at home for two reasons–to sleep, and to spend time with my sister. When she wasn’t home and I wasn’t working one of my three dead-end jobs, I was usually holing up in a coffee shop. That’s where I learned that coffee is kind of like plies–something you can count on almost anywhere you find yourself. Something that felt safe, and like home, to a kid who’d never really experienced either of those things before. 

When I was twenty, my family fell apart, and I was welcomed–kicking and screaming and a feral little thing though I was–to take part in another one. The kind I’d once been pretty sure didn’t exist, and absolutely certain that I’d never have. One of the first things I learned in that house was how to use an Aeropress. And for the next four years, Christmas mornings and late nights and slow Mondays and mugs that were seasoned with my tears at the dinner table and on the floor in the living room and even while they were still on the counter, were woven into the fabric of a quietly profound sort of living which caused coffee and home to become nearly interchangeable in my mind.

When I was twenty-three, I took a knife in the back at my longtime job and found myself bawling in my car in the Crossing parking lot… and very shortly bawling on the couch in Daniel’s office instead. Once he’d gotten the mess of me somewhat gathered up and put back together, he sent me to go get some coffee… at that same upstairs shop where I used to hide. That cup of coffee was a potent reminder that the place where I once lingered with nowhere else to go, unable to stomach the thought of going home, had become a stop between the place I can (and do) always go, and the place I may run to and think of as home for the rest of my life. 

Last October, after a very long and hard and frustrating rehearsal, Katie Drees saved my life by bringing me a cup of coffee while I cried over a plate of cold YMCA chicken fingers that I desperately needed to eat but absolutely could not stomach. The coffee settled my stomach and my heart both enough for me to get dinner down. A few days later, I wrote an absurdly long reflection comparing that to the importance of running to whatever Scripture, whatever communion with the Lord, you can, when the larger and deeper things are too much for your heart or spirit… principally, to the Psalms.

A few days ago, I stood in the Eastons’ kitchen, weeping over the heaviness of the world and the hardness of brand new baby church plants and my codependent, borderline abusive relationship with dance, while Beck made me a cup of coffee. He gave me my coffee… and then he gave me a book. A reflective commentary on the Psalms. Dare I say, the coffee of the Bible. 

I’ve woken up in artsy Air BnBs and Winchester-grade motels, in hammocks in the Colorado mountains, Montana dorm rooms, and Mexican mission bases. In the houses of near-strangers and next to my best friends on earth. In my bedroom in the basement of the only real home I’ve ever had… and on the floor of a bargain one bedroom apartment in Pueblo, CO. Yes, sometimes (one might say frequently, even) on the back seat of my Impala. The thing I’ve been able to count on in every single one of them is a hot cup of coffee. I don’t think there are words in the English language to describe how beautiful I think that is. It is my deeply-held belief that coffee is one of the greatest gifts of common grace God has given us here on earth. 

And so, once a year, usually a few hours late, I ramble about this magical brown liquid in hopes that I can share even a small part of my love for it and the grace it's been in my life with all of you. Hopefully, I’ve done that tonight. Happy coffee day.