Pull Up a Chair
At the Kitchen Table
Dear Friend,
Do you remember kitchen tables?
Not the eating part — though that matters too. I mean the sitting part. The lingering. The cup of coffee that went cold because the conversation was too good to interrupt. The way certain kitchen tables had a kind of gravity to them — you just ended up there when something was hard.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
I loved sitting at my Grandma Katherine’s kitchen table with a cup of tea. She had a way of settling into her chair that told you she wasn’t going anywhere. She listened. She asked questions — the kind that helped you find what you were actually feeling underneath what you thought you were feeling. There were tears sometimes. Hugs. A lot of love. And when I got up from that table, something in me had shifted. I didn’t always have answers. But I felt less alone.
I think a lot of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Maybe it was your grandmother’s table. Maybe it was your mother’s, or a neighbor’s, or a dear friend’s. Maybe it was your own table on a quiet morning before the house woke up — just you and God and a cup of something warm.
Kitchen tables have always been a place where people bring their real selves.
Twenty-six years ago, Troy and I had a season that brought us to our kitchen table in a different way.
I was serving as a Director of Christian Education at a church I loved — poured everything into it. But there were serious problems that needed to be addressed, and when I went to the people who could have helped, they chose not to. After exhausting every option, I made the heartbreaking decision to resign.
The night we said goodbye to the youth, we came home and cried ourselves to sleep.
In the months that followed, Troy and I would come home from church and pace. Around and around our big farmhouse kitchen table. We couldn’t sit down — the grief was too heavy for sitting. We had to move. We were walking through a wilderness neither of us had chosen, carrying questions that had no good answers.
Why, God? Why?
We kept stumbling into the same painful realization: we couldn’t fix anything. And that helplessness — that love-with-nowhere-to-land feeling — is one of the hardest things I have ever carried.
That kitchen table held a lot of grief.
But here’s what I know now that I didn’t fully understand then: God was at that table too.
Not with answers. Not with a timetable. But present. Real. Meeting us right in the walking-in-circles, the tears, the questions.
Sunday after Sunday during that season, I would sit in the pew of our sister church with tears streaming down my face. And I would go forward to the Lord’s Table — another table entirely — with empty hands and a shattered heart. And I would hear the pastor say:
“Given and shed for you.”
Week after week. For you. Not when you’ve figured it out. Not when you’ve stopped pacing. Right now. For you.
That is where I received Christ Himself — in the bread and the wine, in the middle of my mess. Not where I thought I should be. Not where I wanted to be. But right where I was.
There is something about a table.
Last week I spoke at a women’s conference. Afterward, several women came up to ask what a coaching consultation actually looks like.
I told them it’s a little like sitting down with someone over coffee or tea. You share what’s on your heart, and together we gently untangle what’s weighing on you and discover practical tools and biblical hope for the season you’re in.
But I’ve been thinking about that answer ever since — because it’s true, but it doesn’t quite capture it.
What I really mean is this:
I want it to feel like Grandma Katherine’s table. Like the kind of space where you don’t have to have it together to pull up a chair. Where someone will actually listen — not to fix you or give you a formula, but to help you find what God is already doing in the middle of your hard thing.
I’ve been calling my free consultations something new:
☕ At the Kitchen Table with Michelle
Because that’s what I want it to be. A grace-filled place to bring your real self.
Most of them are virtual, so bring your favorite coffee or tea and pull up a chair from wherever you are.
There is always room at the table.
If something in this is tugging at you — if you’ve been carrying something heavy and you haven’t had a safe place to bring it — I’d love to sit with you.
You can grab a spot right here:
Reserve your seat at the table →
It’s free. It’s just a conversation. And you don’t have to have anything figured out to show up.
💜
In God’s peace and joy,
Michelle