I met god in a coffee shop on a Tuesday afternoon, an unassuming place tucked between a laundromat and a secondhand shop. Her hair was tossed in a messy bun, a pencil tucked behind one ear. (After all, I suppose she was an artist in her own way.) When I walked in, she wiped her hands on her apron and smiled, one that reached her tired eyes, despite it all. "What can I get you?" she asked, almost by second nature, the way we all become our jobs eventually. "I'm not sure," I answered. I wanted to say answers, forgiveness, more time - and something in her eyes said I know, I know, I know - so I simply said "surprise me" with a quiet kind of trust, and she nodded like that was enough. We made small talk as she made my drink, and I asked how she was doing. She laughed, surprised, and said nobody had asked her that in a while. I learned that afternoon that omnipotence and exhaustion are not, apparently, mutually exclusive. That even god worked only to make a living. I sat for a few minutes in the particular silence of that place while the world outside continued in all its noise and urgency, not knowing she was in here not knowing she was glad, in some small way to have been asked. After all, isn't everyone?