Breakfast Tea

It was just another typical rushing, busy morning. I got up, woke Xander and Raylee, and went to the kitchen to start breakfast. Xander has started drinking coffee, which I have mixed feelings about, and Raylee LOVES to drink hot tea. I use my Keurig to run the hot water into the appropriate cups and pots, while the kids are in the shower.

Because Raylee loves her tea so much, for Christmas this year, I searched all over the antique malls for a single person tea pot. In my searching for Raylee’s tea pot, I also found a cup and plate set that were just beautiful and delicate for a little lady. I was so excited to see her open that gift, and it turned out to be her very favorite Christmas present.

It was this tea pot and plate set that I filled with the hot water this morning.

Raylee finished her shower and I went to help blow out her hair. We were talking about our day, and the plans for the evening when we heard it. CRASH! and the little tiny . uh-oh!

Too late. Broken beyond repair. And lots of crying.

Zoe didn’t mean to drop the tea cup, and she didn’t even know it was broke, or what “broke” even meant. But that didn’t keep Raylee from crying. Or being angry. She started to yell at Zoe, to which Zoe starting crying too, and before long the din in the kitchen was growing quite loud.

I tried to explain to Raylee that Zoe didn’t understand, and that she was probably sorry, and I ended my ‘mom lecture’ with a firm statement of “It’s all just STUFF Raylee, it’s not what is really important!”

After the kids got on  the bus, and the china was thrown away, I sat sipping my coffee thinking about that statement.  “It’s all just STUFF, not what’s really important” I have told myself that many times in my life.  Recently, it is usually after the kids have broken or torn something up that was precious to me.  My father said it to me, as I cried over the wreckage of my 3rd, car when I was 16.  My mother said it to me on my wedding night, as I cried over my wedding dress, some sweet young man stepped on the train while we were dancing and left a large tear across the hem.  I cried buckets of tears as we sat on the back porch and watched daddy’s barn burn and he said, “It’s all just STUFF, it’s not what’s really important”  then he cried too.

This world is so hard to live in sometimes.  We are to be “In the world but not OF the world”  and we are to remember that our “Treasure is in heaven”.  I try to do that everyday.  But so many things in this world are precious to me.  And different things are precious at different times.  When I was 16, my car was precious to me, but it was just a car.  On my wedding night, my dress was precious to me, but it was just a dress.  And when daddy’s barn burned, well, I’m still not over that one, but it was just a barn too.

I am sure that Raylee will have a rough day at school today, her tea cup meant a lot to her.  It was precious to her.  She is only 8.  What a tough lesson to start learning at such a young age.  But what a great lesson to learn. Teaching her to remember that all this “stuff” is just temporary, and that heaven will be beautiful and better; that is a great lesson to learn.

God gives us comfort in knowing that “stuff” is  just not important.