I want you to meet me at the coffee shop on the corner of California and 8th, the one made of bricks, white trim, large windows, and a black door. The one with the lazy Maine Coon cat that stretches out between naps, and the place that serves you beverages in dreamy little ceramic cups.
We can small talk about the weather; you can hide behind work details and family drama. We can take pictures of the raindrops that are racing each other down the window and post them on Instagram with a snippet of Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop as our song of choice.
But I know there is a deep ache in your heart, even if you don’t feel it all the time. I know there’s a stirring feeling in your soul, like you were made for greater and better things, and you are, but you feel stuck. I can see the bags under your eyes that no amount of makeup can hide. I can sense the frustration of someone else getting the thing you’ve been praying for, and the pictures of your friend’s wedding digging under your skin.
And I want to grab your hands, in between your Affogato and my Iced Blonde Vanilla Latte, and look into your eyes and say to your heart, soul, and every fiber of your being, “girl to girl, it’s time to leave the restaurant.”
Girl, I love you, but we can’t keep sitting here; you can’t keep sitting here.
You keep looking over your shoulder at the door, hoping that person will walk in.
You keep replaying what happened: the conversations, the hurt, the loneliness.
You come back every day, asking in anger where your happy ending is.
You are waiting to continue your life until you receive closure.
You keep pausing your life because of the what if they come back, what if they change, what if they say all the right things.
You stop pursuing your dreams just because you haven’t had the ‘big’ break yet.
You’re death gripping what God has asked you to release.
You keep trying to open the door that God has bolted shut.
Because while we’re sitting here, listening to the same ten songs playing on a loop, ordering another drink, another pastry — checking their activity status, asking God to change what has already happened, and trying to outrun a season that God wants us to flourish in or learn something from — God’s been waiting outside, umbrella open, and GPS set to the next location.
We have been focused on the empty chair, the messages we aren’t receiving, the gloomy skies, the fact that this Ed Sheeran or Passenger song (depending on what vibe your coffee shop is) has played twenty times since you walked in the door. Our beautiful lives have revolved around this one event, this one season, this one heartbreak, this one person, this one answered prayer that we haven’t looked outside.
Go ahead, look outside.
He’s been waiting. And not to make a serious writing millennial coded, but God is going to clock your tea. And for my non-millennial friends, that means God is going to expose the deepest recesses of your heart and soul — like we’re going back to Junior High stuff, deep. God is going to call you out; God is going to bring that truth out one way or another, and it probably will not be how we want it to.
God is also going to get you a coffee to go, choose the path with the least amount of puddles as He walks you to the car, have the radio set to the smooth jazz channel from the 1980s playing, and have a package of Kleenex and fuzzy socks in the glove box.
I used to believe that God would send me on my way in the middle of the discomfort, unknowns, and heartbreak, all alone without so much as a send-off. I didn’t think He cared what I went through or how I went through it. But that wasn’t God; that was the devil taking my anxiety on a joyride.
God takes care of you before, during, and after.
Maybe it won’t always be with grand gestures and manna from the sky, but you can rest assured that leaving the coffee shop is going to be the beginning of a very new life. A big, beautiful new life and a big beautiful tomorrow.
And look, the rain let up.
