On March 19, 2016, a woman arrived at a Dutch Bros Coffee location in Vancouver, Washington, to buy a coffee. But the workers noticed that she was devastated: her husband, only 37 years old, had died the night before.
One of the employees, 19-year-old Peirce Dunn, began talking with her and offered her the coffee for free. Then he asked if he could pray for her. The woman agreed, and several workers came over to the drive-thru window to hold her hands and be with her as they prayed.
The scene was photographed by Barbara Danner, a customer waiting behind her. The image shows only the car and the workers’ hands reaching through the window, but behind that photograph was a woman facing one of the most painful moments of her life. Danner posted the image on Facebook, and it ended up being shared more than 100,000 times.
The employees never imagined that small gesture would go viral. To them, they had done nothing extraordinary: they had simply seen a person suffering and decided to stop for a few minutes to be with her. Before she left, they even told her that she could come back whenever she needed to talk.
Sometimes we cannot solve another person’s pain. But we can do something much simpler: make sure that, for a few minutes, they do not have to face it alone.