A Cup of Cold Water

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Can you believe that March is almost over?! And that our letter-writing month is drawing to a close?! I'm wondering how you are doing. I'm suspecting that notes from readers of this blog are now hanging on refrigerators containing blessing and encouragement to those you have loved with your words.

I'd like to encourage you to think of one more type of person you might want to jot a note to. I wrote the following piece a few years ago because it was a powerful childhood memory that I wanted my children to share with me.

When I first wrote it, I couldn't reread it without literally sobbing. It is incredible how such a simple act of kindness can have such an emotional impact over 50 years later.

Another incredible thing about it is that when I located Flossie and shared this with her, she told me that she had absolutely no memory of this incident! She had no idea that her hands and a pan of water had poured blessing on me.

I am so grateful that I could let Flossie know what a gift she had been to me as a child.

Is there someone in your life--in the distant past or currently--you'd like to send a note of thanks to? Someone who may be completely unaware that they had offered you a cold cup of water? It doesn't have to be a written account like mine, just a note saying a simple thank you.

I call this "To the Least of These"--it may spark some ideas for you.



Sometimes memories can be kind; the passing of time can soften the ragged edges of pain. Sometimes that softening can turn the pain into a beautiful thing, like a cup of cold water for a thirsty child.

The year was 1957 and the grass was just starting to grow over my father’s grave. With the stop of my father’s heartbeat, my mother had been thrust violently into the role of breadwinner, and during that summer of my tenth year, she sat at a desk miles away from home working on a teaching degree. For those six weeks, my two teen-aged sisters were left to care for my younger sister and me. In their bobby socks and pony tails, they spent their summer feeding us from cupboards that were too often bare, hanging our clothes on the line to dry, and keeping us safe at night.

In the afternoon of the day of my memory, I was taken to the doctor’s office with a dangerously infected toenail. Dr. Barrall bent his head, with its blazing red hair, over my foot, injected a shot of Novocain into my big toe, and proceeded to rip off the nail. My screams shot down the hallway and filled the waiting room.

That evening I lay alone in my rumpled bed. There were no pictures on the walls of my bedroom; there were no curtains at the window to sway in the breeze. This was the house we had escaped to after our house on Main Street had been taken away from us, after my father had sat down in the living room chair and died.

With my leg stretched out in front of me, I watched the stain of red seeping through the fat wad of gauze around my toe. The aching pain moved up my leg, and I sobbed. I had no mother; I had no father. I felt so very alone, in a house on the edge of town, with no pictures on the walls and no curtains at the window.

My sisters’ friend Flossie had stopped by the house, and the three girls were whispering nervously in another room. They should have been giggling together, like teenagers do on hot July evenings, but instead they were responsible for a wailing, inconsolable child.

Quietly, Flossie stepped into my room carrying a pan of cool water and a wash cloth. She sat down on the edge of my bed and placed the pan on the nightstand. As she reached into the pan to saturate the cloth, she started cooing soft and soothing words.

I can still see her hands—dipping the cloth in the pan, wringing out the water, wiping my face, my damp forehead, my swollen eyes. Her hands—dipping the cloth in the water, wringing it out, wiping my face, my forehead, my eyes. Making soft, soothing sounds.

My sobs stopped, my body relaxed, and now it was just the murmuring of Flossie’s voice, the swishing of the water, the cool cloth to my face.

A gentle grace-filled quiet entered the room—and I slept.