Reading Tea Leaves

Learn anything new from your cup of tea lately? I did.                                                 

Two winters ago, in an attempt to keep my resolution to spend more time with God, I grabbed a hot cup of tea from the Dairy Barn drive-thru and then took my prayer book in the Jeep to sit dockside. New Year’s resolutions fade fast, so it was important that I make the trips to the water to talk to my Best Friend a regular routine. Pulling up to the water’s edge to see the morning sun shining on the bay was intended to keep me on track.

However, instead of praying, the procrastinator in me took over. I stalled to open the lid of the styrofoam cup and remove the tea bag, and the funniest thing happened! As I lifted the dripping bag from the tea, suspending it by its string for just a moment, the tea leaves re-arranged themselves into the perfect shape of a smiley face! No kidding! It was undeniably a face visible through the mesh of the bag! And the face had squinting eyes as if it were laughing at me! Plain as day! No one could deny it!  “Oh, let me get my phone,” the procrastinator suggested. “This will make a great Instagram post. I can imagine the comments. What hashtags will I write to go with it?” But then I moved ever so slightly and it was enough to jostle the wet leaves a smidge and bye-bye smiley face. Lost it. Back to the ordinary old knot of dark brown wet leaves I’m used to. 

And what’s the lesson? (There’s always a lesson. I’ve noticed that making a specific effort to spend time with God means He will show up, even when I’m distracted by my tea.) I think the lesson He was after was about living in the moment. I think it was about enjoying the smiley face before it gets messed up. You see, instead of smiling back, I ruined it by trying to capture it and take it with me into the future. I so wanted to treasure and share the momentary chuckle with a picture and a social media post, that I shortened the joy it gave me. In fact, I ruined it completely. Maybe the smile was just for me. Instead of meeting with God like I said I would, I hesitated to fiddle with my tea first. Was the smiley face God’s way of laughing at me for delaying my good intentions by putting something before Him? Like tea? And then perhaps I was further instructed to cut it out already when the smile disappeared. After that, I got the message to switch it up; I laughed at myself with Him before my usual prayer routine, then re-focussed on Him alone. Time better spent.

And I almost missed the humor in what God was doing. Doesn’t the whole scene remind you of a gypsy fortune-teller reading the tea leaves to tell the future? Funny guy, that God. Right? Because He was actually teaching me about the present. And He knows I trust that my future is all buttoned up by Him in advance (Jeremiah 29:11), so no fortune teller needed. It’s an adorable little reminder that I can safely stay in the present without worrying about tomorrow.

And God is very patient with me, by the way. He’s shown me this lesson lots of other times. And He’s been pretty creative in His ways before. Apparently God sees my struggle with staying in the present, with enjoying the moment, with avoiding the worries of past mistakes and future dread. And He loves me enough to help me out. I am definitely a stop-and-smell-the-roses type, but I am also a chronic worrier. I lament about bad decisions of my past and ruminate over what I could’ve done better. I may notice the present for a moment, like the tea-leaf smile, but I don’t stay there. I am easily dragged off to the past or the future in my mind and that’s not appreciating the moment I’m in, not enough to keep me in it anyway.

One of the more memorable times when God showed this truth to me was years ago, when I used to dedicate a lot of time to hiking the Greenbelt Trails of Long Island. The Greenbelt Trails are marked hiking trails that wind like spider veins all over Suffolk County. They explore the coastline and the Pine Barrens and many other areas of the east end. In my years as a single mom, I spent hours walking them with my kids, or with just my Black Labrador Delilah or on scheduled hikes in a group with a guide. The walks with the kids gave me something free to do when money was scarce. The walks with Delilah gave me time for self-reflection. But it’s the guided walks that were the most exciting. I usually brought some friends along and together we met new people who loved to be outside as much as we did. The guides told us details about vegetation or wildlife or history as we walked. Never the same walk twice, even if on the same path. I came to expect a feeling of rejuvenation, a feeling of peace, and also a feeling of intrigue with each of the walks. None of the hikes disappointed.  

One of the most memorable of these walks was a sunset walk through the woods to the beaches of East Hampton. The walk started in early evening on a warm summer night. Wearing sunglasses, my friends and I carried beach blankets and snacks and water bottles in backpacks, fully prepared for a sunset picnic on the beach. The trail started roadside as a wide path toward the water, but veered off in and out of trees and wild blueberry bushes as it narrowed, heading indirectly for a private and not often seen hidden spot on the beach. Once we found our destination, we marveled at the wonders of the view. These are blessings Long Islanders too often forget to appreciate: the beauty of our coastal waters, our sunsets from soft white sands, and their close proximity to home.

We kicked off our shoes and took a moment to cherish the view. We watched the sun setting from a high point in the bluffs on the north shore of the south fork of Long Island until the last pink, red and orange glows had completely disappeared. And then the moonless darkness (and the mosquitoes) took hold of our night and it was time to make our exit. None of us knew our way back without the expertise of the trained guide. So, when we heard him tell us it was time to leave the beach, we gathered our things in a jiffy. 

The trip back was much different from the walk toward the beach. Each of us had been asked to bring a flashlight to guide us back in the black darkness that the sunny beach had become. The trails were impossible to spot for newcomers. We needed the guide to take us through the twists and turns that led to the dead end street where we had parked our cars. Without our flashlights, there would have been no way to follow the guide. I couldn’t have found my way at all. The visibility was absolutely zero.  

I remember distinctly being the last person to get my act together, to gather my blanket and fold it and place it into the backpack with as little sand as possible, to locate the walking stick I had found to use for the evening, and to get my shoes back on. All of this left me last in line on our hike as the guide just took off at a brisk pace into the darkness.   

One of my friends waited for me, and the two of us hurried along to catch up, me last, like the Cowardly Lion entering the Wicked Witch’s castle. And then my imagination started in. I wondered how safe I was as a skinny girl at the end of the line. I wondered if maybe there weren’t somebody behind me already, maybe two somebodies with malice in mind. They could bump me on the head and carry me off in the darkness, and no one would ever know. So, I quickly spun around and turned the light of my flashlight behind me just for a second. I could catch those sneaky somebodies and blind them with a bright light to the eyes. I would foil their plans to harm me. As I swept the light behind me, of course I found no one. The light shone until it didn’t anymore, blackness the only thing beyond the circle of light. It was a little scary, but I needed to walk on. I was stuck between senseless panic about what could be lurking behind me and confusion over which way to go as the pack marched on ahead unaware. So, I shone the light back onto the traveling heels of my friend and tried to follow his footsteps. And it’s then that I missed the root that lay across the path right under my own feet. I tripped. In a few quick thumping forward steps, I caught myself and continued walking at a normal pace, adrenaline reminding me that the light was actually needed on the path directly beneath me.  

For the rest of the hike back to the car, I recited scripture. I remembered that God promises He will use His Word in my life and “make it a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path”. I don’t need the light to illuminate what is behind me, or to look forward to what’s ahead of me on the trail. I need the light to shine right on the path under my own feet, in the present, so that I don’t trip and fall. God is here in my present giving me nudges telling me to stop looking back at my past and to stop worrying about how far I need to go in my future. Keeping the light on my present (which means enjoying the smiley face tea leaves of the moment) is the lesson.

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