Just Another Pot

Each morning, all three children sit on the kitchen floor and drink their milk while I rinse out the leftovers in the coffee pot.

Soggy clumped-together grounds always seem to spill a few amber drops on the floor before dropping into the trash.

As the children move on to Cheerios, I clean up the mess before filling up the pot with 8 cups of clear water and setting it back on the burner, still lukewarm from this morning's use. A filter. A roughly measured scoop of Community Dark Roast. And my act of love is finished until tomorrow.

I don't drink coffee. Can't stand the stuff. But my husband consumes it by the gallon.

He drove me crazy for months before I caved and agreed to buy this coffee maker that always keeps the water hot in the back, supposedly "perfect" for making great coffee. He then bought special "Bubba keg" mugs because anything normal-sized just didn't hold enough coffee to help him maneuver through an hour of rush hour traffic.

I seriously don't understand his (and most everybody else's) need for coffee first thing each morning. I love the smell of coffee. The aroma of fresh grounds. But not the taste.

My mom says as a young child, I would sit in my Grandpa's lap and drink the undissolved sugar in the bottom of his cup . I think it's just a story to shame me into liking coffee. You know, like the "Well, you ate it when you were little!" story I'm telling Wyatt right now about eating brocolli?

But that oft-repeated memory didn't make me like coffee any more than my tales of Wyatt eating all the broccoli off everybody's plates are working now.

I've tried to learn the art of social coffee drinking. And failed.

In college a guy asked me out for coffee. And not wanting to seem like an idiot--I mean, who on this planet doesn't drink coffee--I went and drank a whole cup.

A few months later when my future-husband arrived on the scene, I tried again to drink another cup. And that was it. I drew my line in the sand. If I were going to live with this man for the rest of my life, he had to know I hated coffee. There was no way I was going to spend the next 60 or so years pretending to like that beverage.

And I haven't drank a cup since.

But each morning, I assemble everything so my husband can stumble to the kitchen and pour the pre-measured water through the machine.

Many days, I don't tell him how much I love, appreciate, and need him. Other days, I am irritated at his not doing this or at his doing that. Sometimes, my heart pains with words I wish I could take back.

But even on those days when I'm not the best wife I could be, I still measure the water and the grounds. A small sacrifice to show my love and respect for him.

It's those small, daily sacrifices that make the difference...in my marriage, in my relationship with God, in life itself.