Coffee notes

In the summer of 2019, my husband Will and I were finishing up our paperwork to be approved to become foster parents. We were blindly anxious about what all that would mean for us. At that time, we were two years into an infertility diagnosis and had walked through three miscarriages – a very low point in our lives.

We were anxious to fill an extra room in our home with a baby. It was hard to walk into that room. The emptiness and the quietness of it bothered me. The void in our hearts and in our home grew until we knew the Lord was calling us to open both our hearts and home to children who needed those spaces.

There we were, neither of us knowing much about foster care, signing paper after paper promising to take care of someone else’s child like we would our own. It was an intimidating process but also a blessed one that we didn’t want to take for granted. Before we even finished signing paperwork, we received a call about a little boy who needed a safe place to go.

Will and I both took a deep breath, and before we knew it, we were meeting with this little boy’s social worker. She informed us that it would be a few days before he would be placed with us, but he was coming. (This was a special case; usually kids in custody need a placement right away).

Fast forward a few days, and we were meeting this little boy and taking him to his new temporary home. The empty and quiet room was finally about to be filled.

Words of life

This little boy, who we’ll call Teddy, had been through more in his short life than we could have imagined. He was deeply hurt. He had big emotions that Will and I were not sure how to handle. Our days were quickly filled with meltdowns, screams like we had never heard before, and words that no 6-year-old should know.

During this time, Will had to be at work at 3:30 each morning. So, I was the one to get Teddy ready for school. The quiet mornings I used to know (and sometimes dreaded, because quiet is hard when desiring a baby) were no longer quiet. Teddy would let me know in his own way that he did not want to go to school; he made it loud and clear.

Will felt guilty for not being there to help, so he began writing me notes in the morning and leaving them right beside the coffee pot full of freshly brewed coffee. Those notes became such a life source for me each day.

Our time with Teddy only lasted a few months. I am not at liberty to share much about him, but God is completely involved in redeeming this little boy’s story. He received the help that he deserved and is now with family that he didn’t know he had at the time. God is in the details.

Expressions of love

Even though Teddy was no longer there in the mornings, Will continued to write a note and have coffee ready for me each day. My mornings returned to the quiet ones. As crazy as it sounds, I didn’t really know which type of morning I preferred at the time. Quietness can be extremely loud when you’re longing for a baby.

Will’s coffee notes were always simple:

“I hope you got some good sleep.”

“I love you. Have a good morning.”

“I’ll see you soon.”

It is hard to explain just how much those little notes meant to me. They met me exactly where I was each morning – when I was miscarrying our third and fourth babies; when I found out another friend was pregnant with her second child; when the childless holidays would come and go; when doctor appointments brought no good news; and when another negative pregnancy test landed in our trash can. I could go on and on. Will’s coffee notes – simple words written on a sticky note or napkin or whatever was on hand at the time – always met me in the moment. … And they still do.

His notes have changed over the years as we’ve seen the Lord answer our prayers through adoption and two healthy pregnancies. They also changed a bit as we walked through the loss of our second baby boy at just 26 weeks.

Now his notes meet me in the mornings with our youngest on my hip and the other two usually not far away. His notes remain simple, but the love that they show me is not simple at all.

If I am counting correctly, I have around 1,800 coffee notes from Will. Eighteen hundred little reminders of the love he has for me. Eighteen hundred reasons our kids know to look for “Mama’s notes” in the mornings. 

Editor’s Note: Anne Cockrell is co-host of Hannah’s Heart, a half-hour program that encourages couples to cling to Christ as they walk through infertility and miscarriage. It can be heard Saturdays at 5 p.m. Central on American Family Radio. This article was adapted from a blog originally posted at afa.net/thestand.