I was in the Dutch Bros drive through since I had extra time after dropping off my youngest son at daycare. My wife took the day off to watch our oldest son since school is out for Thanksgiving.
When I got up to the window, I overheard one lady say, "Oh, that one was supposed to be 'hot'?" She was referring to my coffee. My wife's was made correctly. Mine was a white chocolate mocha with two shots of caramel. All the ingredients were correct. It just wasn't hot. No big deal.
The lady was very apologetic and offered to make me another one. I assured her it wasn't necessary but she wasn't convinced. I explained to her I slowly sip the coffee and drink about one third of it. By then it's room temperature, so I fill up a shaker bottle with ice and pour the rest in that and turn it into an iced coffee. She seemed skeptical still and asked, "You promise you won't be disappointed?" I promised her I wouldn't. I wished her a Happy Thanksgiving and drove off to deliver coffee.
The interaction got me thinking about how easy it is to take a small moment and either uplift and encourage someone, or bring them down and detract from their good mood. Which do we choose to do?
With the added stress of Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, do we want to lift people up or bring them down? These times are hard enough with memories of loss being triggered, stress about budgets, gifts, illness, etc. Our lives have enough problems on their own, most through no fault of our own, so why add to it?
Let's remember that most of our troubles are momentary, and give grace and kindness to others, especially to those who seem the least likely to give it back.
And yes, I enjoyed my iced coffee as I wrote this post, just like I promised.
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