> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Someone took it to me
- URL: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/someone-took-it-to-me/
- Published: 2026-08-04T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-04T10:00:00.000Z
- Author: Ruby Hayes
- Tags: devotional, Week 11, #081

*"He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds."* — Psalm 147:3

Edna called this morning and told me that the woman's husband died. Last Thursday. She did not say it gently because Edna does not say things gently. She said it the way you say it when you have been expecting it for a while and the expecting has worn out the softness. He died at home. The hospice people were there. She said the funeral is Friday.

I sat at the kitchen table after I hung up the phone and I did not move for a long time.

I have been praying for this woman since June. I do not know her well. I know her face and I know the way she held her purse strap at church earlier this summer, the way she measured the parking lot with her eyes like she was calculating how far it was to the car. I knew what that meant. I have walked that walk. The body tells you what the mouth will not say and hers was saying that the ground underneath her was not solid anymore.

And now the ground has opened. The thing she was bracing for has happened. Her husband is dead and she is standing in the kitchen of a house that has one fewer person in it than it did last week, and everything in that kitchen looks the same and nothing in that kitchen is the same, and she will not be able to explain this to anyone who has not stood in that kitchen themselves.

I know that kitchen. I stood in mine seven years ago. I stood at the counter and I looked at Earl's coffee mug and I could not wash it. I could not put it away. I could not pour the coffee out because he had poured it and his hand had been on the handle and if I poured it out then that was one more thing of his that was gone. I know how foolish this sounds. I also know it is true.

People will bring food. They are probably already bringing food. There will be a casserole from someone at church and a plate of something from a neighbor and the woman will eat none of it for a few days and then she will eat some of it because the body gets hungry whether the heart does or not. Helen Marsh brought me a green bean casserole in a Pyrex dish and I ate it standing up at the counter three days after the funeral because I could not sit in the chair across from his empty chair and eat a meal.

I will make something this afternoon. I do not know what yet. Something that reheats well. Something she does not have to think about. I will put it in a dish she does not have to return and I will take it to her house and I will not stay long because the last thing a woman in that first week needs is someone sitting in her living room expecting conversation.

I will take it to her because someone took it to me. Because the casserole is not about the food. It is about the showing-up. It is about saying I see you and I have stood where you are standing and you do not have to talk about it or explain it or be brave about it. You just have to eat something tonight.

*Lord, be with her. Be with all of us who know that kitchen.*