Well, I actually wrote this and posted this and then deleted it back at the end of May because I was wary of the whole blog thing and my crazy idea of putting my words in print on the web. Now I find the summer is nearly over as the kids prepare to return to school soon. Tomorrow will be August, and our summer has been full of trips to and from the airport and saying goodbye and hello to one or more members of the family. And for those left behind...trips to the vet, a strenuous online English course, Legos, monsoon rains, play dates and routines. I have just returned home from Northern Ireland and have only 2 children at home...it all seems a bit strange. Tim has been in America for 2 weeks and begins a 2 week sports camp today. Scott and Matthew are in Korea as Scott speaks at the Korean National staff conference. Anyway, it has given me more time to consider blogging (as well as many other things) again and what that is all about. Being the often random person that I am, I will probably just begin writing without a lot of plan, but that which is on my heart at the time. We will see where this blogging thing goes. But for now...a reflection...a memory...a fragrance...of a time gone by.

The Smell of the Cup

Scott and I went to Carrefour for coffee at Black Canyon Coffee today. This is the same place where we ate a meal nearly once daily for our first few weeks in Chiang Mai…and not for the coffee, but for food as our ability to fix meals in our kitchen was limited to breakfast cereal with milk.

Today was different…no food, just coffee and it felt so comfortable and normal like we’d been having coffee there for many years. I got the usual—something I never dreamed of drinking or even knew what it was, let alone for it to be the usual—Espresso. Scott chose something similar…yet different. As par for the course, he offered me a sip. Instantly, as I put the cup to my mouth, the fragrance brushed my memory. Somehow, I was taken back to my Aunt Donna’s bedroom on Ribble Avenue. I was being tugged gently out of a deep sleep by the aroma of my grandma’s cup of coffee in the wee hours of the morning or her sleepless night. Sometimes, my sleep overpowered me and the fragrance faded until a later hour. Other times, I anxiously stared at the thin line of dim light showing under the closed kitchen door…and sleep avoided me. Some visits I found the moon was brighter than the kitchen light and other visits it was the kitchen light that distracted my view of the stars over the grape arbor, tan Chevy, and apple tree.

But it was the aroma that reminded me there was a cup of coffee on the table and my grandma was maybe reading a two day old paper, figuring a bill, or writing a grocery list. And I wondered why she couldn’t sleep. What did she think about? What was she doing that time? Perhaps, pondering the price of bananas that week, or what to fix for lunch, or how many clothes were waiting to be ironed which she did sometimes with her cup alongside. Or was it that she thought of deeper things…things that only a grandma would know.

Occasionally my anxiety would turn to nerve and I would venture out of bed between breaths and the gentle rustle of seasonal bedding. Silently I would inch out of the bed and across the floor as if my life depended upon my silence. What was I afraid of? Carefully, I grasped the door’s handle and turned. I never wanted to startle her, but I knew I didn’t want the whole house to wake up and share my moment.

Sometimes Grandma would send me back to bed with a pat on the head and “You should go back to sleep”. Occasionally, the rare invitation was offered to “have a seat”. “You want some crackers and milk or some breakfast?”

Those were special times and quiet conversation; and her coffee was there beside her…often cold…and the aroma of the brew had lingered as it clung to that quiet kitchen for its very existence.

A brushed memory, a sweet reminiscence…fragrance engulfs and transports us wherever our hearts and memories allow. In the same way, the fragrance of Christ transports us to His cup when we’re in tune with His Presence.

2 Corinthians 2:14But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.