Her Breath Smelled Like Coffee
The word for Friday, August 21, 2026 is Her Breath Smelled Like Coffee.
The anchor verses are John 16:12 and John 16:32.
There is a hospice in the mountains of Colorado that has been doing the same thing for forty five years.
Their team asks every patient the same three questions. What do you have that is unresolved. What do you need help with. Do you have any last wishes.
Early this month a man named Dan answered.
He wanted to hold a golden retriever puppy. Specifically one young enough to still have puppy breath.
That is a narrow request, and it has a clock on it. Puppy breath does not last. It is gone in a matter of weeks. After that the animal is still a golden retriever, still soft, still glad to see you, but the specific thing he asked for is no longer in the world.
A nurse there named Geneva went looking. She did not have a puppy and neither did the hospice, so she went out to strangers. She posted on two message boards for people in Denver and people who keep golden retrievers, and she asked.
Several people wrote back. Most of their puppies turned out to be too old for what he wanted.
Then a woman named Amber Barnett Traub answered, and what she wrote is the reason I am writing today.
She said they had an eleven week old golden puppy. Then she said this.
Her breath smells more like coffee than milk, though. If that is okay please let us know.
Read what she did there.
She had something close to what was asked for and not exactly it. And she said so, in the same sentence, before anybody had to find out later.
She did not oversell it. She did not stay quiet and hope nobody noticed. She did not decide that since it was not a perfect match she should let somebody else answer.
She named the mismatch and offered the thing anyway.
Most of us do the opposite. We hold back what we have until it is presentable, and then the moment passes, and the honest version we could have offered on Tuesday never gets offered at all.
The puppy is called Gladdie, short for Galadriel. She was eleven weeks old, and she still had the smell, and she was exactly what he asked for.
Now go to the upper room on the last night, where Jesus says something to eleven frightened men that HE did not have to say.
I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
HE has more. HE says so out loud. And HE tells them plainly that HE is holding it back, and HE gives the reason for it. They are not able to carry it tonight.
That is a strange kind of honesty. HE could have simply not mentioned it. Instead HE says, there is more, and you are not able for it right now, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
And GOD does not wait until they are stronger before HE says anything at all. HE gives them what they can hold tonight, tells them the rest is coming, and stays in the room with them while they fail to understand it.
And then a few minutes later HE says something else HE did not have to say.
Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
HE tells them they are going to leave HIM. To their faces. Hours before they do it.
No pretending. No managing them. HE says exactly what is coming and exactly what is true about it, and then HE says the other true thing, which is that HE will not be alone in it.
There is something you have been holding back because it is not the right version.
The comfort you could offer somebody, except you have not been through exactly what they are going through. The help you could give, except it is smaller than what they need. The thing you know how to do, except somebody else does it better.
So you say nothing, and the request goes unanswered, and somewhere a person is still waiting.
Amber Barnett Traub did not have the perfect puppy. She had a good one with the wrong breath, and she wrote it down honestly, and it turned out to be the only one in range that was young enough.
The mismatch was worth naming. It was not worth staying quiet over.
GOD has never once required a person to arrive with the correct version of themselves before HE would take what they brought.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
- 🙏 To the one holding back what you have because it is not quite the right thing.
- 🙏 To the one who has been told there is more, and cannot carry it today.
- 🙏 To the one who was left, by people who said they would stay.
- 🙏 To the one asked what you need, who has not answered yet.
Grace and Peace.