Three Cups of Tea

"The first time you take tea with someone, you are a stranger. The second time, you are an honored guest. The third time, you are family." (Balti proverb)
My downtown apartment is dark tonight - the light above the stove and the amber glow of the streetlight in the living room window are plenty. It's rather bizarre to be out of work right now, to be home before midnight, to make myself anything resembling a "real" supper at a "reasonable" hour, & it's nights like these that I find myself wandering aimlessly between chores, between rooms, between Facebook pages, attempting to slow my brain down sometime before the clock strikes three & sleep becomes more pointless.
Tonight, like every other night, is a struggle to keep from opening one more Chrome tab & wasting time somewhere that's not my kitchen. But tonight, the rain outside my window smells of longing & change & peace. Tonight, when that rain started coming down in a drip followed by a drizzle followed by a downpour that had even the most devout walker searching for a ride home from work, I could feel tea & bathwater & a book calling my name.
Tonight, I am taking three cups of tea with Jesus.
I make myself comfortable for our meeting. Work uniform shed, replaced with a men's button-down shirt. Hymns playing. Hunger assuaged. The tea kettle on my stove looks like it belongs in a kitchen far more rustic than my own, clashing horribly with dishwashers and microwaves and Keurig machines.
The first time you take tea with someone, you are a stranger. Even after walking with someone for seven years, sometimes they can feel like a complete stranger. I don't call or write as often as I should. We have some catching up to do, Jesus & I. I hope He is comfortable - I cleaned the apartment as thoroughly as I had time for this morning, but there are still a few undone dishes in the sink, bags strewn on the living room floor (not yet unpacked from my brief vacation last weekend), laundry in the corner of my bedroom not yet put away. I'm probably a little too casual for a date with a Savior right now, in an overlarge button-down & my underwear, my hair soaking wet from the bath, face crimson & drenched in sweat.
I pour my first cup - chai, milk & honey on my tongue with Indian spice, though perhaps black tea is a bad idea at 9pm - & sit down with Him, get to know Him, let Him get to know me. Me: workaholic overcaffeinated self-isolating mess with a heart for justice & nowhere to serve. Him: Son of God, Savior of the world, misunderstood cultural icon. We get past the awkwardness, past my uncertainty & discomfort. We smile & laugh. I lean forward, engaged, my legs still politely crossed under the table. I pour a second cup of tea.
The second, you are an honored guest. I am a friend of Christ. Sometimes I forget that, & sometimes it takes months or years of inconsistency & a rude awakening to remind me that I am still His. But that's the beauty of grace - when I fall & scrape my knees, He offers a hand to help me up & we resume our journey. I've wasted years on the ground, angry with Him for letting me fall, refusing to join Him again, afraid of being hurt again. As I pour my second cup of tea - appropriately named Tension Tamer - I confess this to Him. I'm still afraid to tell Him these things at first - could He stop loving me? could He walk out on me if I say the wrong thing? He, after all, is above me, His ways are higher than my own. How much of my wrongness can He tolerate? He only continues to listen, smiling at my habit of hiding behind my mug & averting my eyes when nerves overtake me. He reminds me that I was the one who let Him in - He won't judge me for the things I say or the way I feel, or ask me to stop talking. I smile, loosen my posture, & pour my third cup of tea.
The third, you are family. It's no use hiding from the One who already knows where & why. All I can do is to fall into the embrace of the One who is at once my Father and my brother and the Spirit guiding me, to ask forgiveness for leaving, to joyfully receive what I already know is mine - while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him. My third cup of tea, chamomile that is beginning to lull me to sleep now as the stroke of one is not far off, relaxes my mind & my tongue. I do not need to vocalize the questions I have, the reservations - do You still love me if I'm a workaholic who sleeps in most Sundays? if I'm liberal? if I'm on birth control? if I'm anorexic & depressed & don't always love You back? - the answers are in His eyes. I've managed to curl up into a ball in my chair, my arms around my legs. He pushes His own chair back & comes to my side, running one hand through my hair to push it away from my face, the other around my own hand to remind me that He will not leave until I ask Him to. I curl further into His embrace, not sure why I ever left.
To think that all this took was three cups of tea.