My dad loves telling stories because they are a powerful way to communicate. They are short but make an important point that is both meaningful and memorable to the listener. As a coach and teacher, he tells stories everyday to inspire and motivate his students, from his elementary PE classes to his high school football team. He has hundreds of stories and is close to publishing them in a book.
The other day, I thought of one of his stories about handling adversity. It teaches us to be like a teabag whenever we face hot water.
The carrot seems strong and unchangeable at first, but when thrown in hot water, it becomes soft and weak. With adversity, it loses its strength and can be easily bent in any direction.
The egg starts out soft on the inside, but that soft heart hardens and cannot be changed afterward. The shell will look the same either way, but when broken the hardness will still be there.
The teabag is different than the carrot and the egg. Once it gets placed in hot water, it reveals flavor and fragrance to everything else in the pot. As situations get worse, the teabag continuously gets better and it changes the situation.
How do you handle adversity? Do you get soft like a carrot, hard like an egg, or strong like a teabag?
I don’t know exactly why I thought of this, but I’m guessing it’s because South Africa has both high adversity and excellent tea. I told the story to my teammates and they encouraged me to tell it to groups. Through a Swazi translator, I’ve told it to orphans, preschoolers, and adults.
Making the most of everything is a lesson we’ve all been learning here, but it helps to be a teabag. We don’t know how long we have to live, but we have the power to positively influence others in difficult times and not be negatively influenced by our circumstances. Two days ago, I read this quote in a book: “We should live everyday like it’s our last because one day we’ll be right.”
This thought made me want to be a teabag even more, but at the time I wasn’t thinking about how short and fragile life can be. Eerily, the next day we found out we were going to to our first African funeral, for a 15-year-old schoolgirl who passed away in her sleep.
In Africa, it is respectful to attend a funeral, even if you don’t know the deceased. We joined her school and family to celebrate her life in a two-hour ceremony, which included a lot of singing. African singing is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.
From what we understood of the funeral, she was remembered for being a teabag. She had “problems with ill health” (still don’t know if this phrase comes from respect or lack of medical knowledge) but nevertheless she was still was joyful and inspiring to those around her, even in her tough circumstances. This is what people want to be remembered for in the long run.
Whether we live to be 15, 75, or 100, we will still face a lot of hot water and life is too short to be a carrot or an egg. Whenever we face adversity, we should strive to be teabags. Stress from hot water shows the need for surrender and we can ask God to take over. Whenever I see myself turning into a carrot or an egg, He will give the fruits of the spirit to make a wonderful tea for the situation, and this tea will benefit others as well.
God sometimes uses hot water to reveal who we really are. I haven’t been in many hot situations on my World Race yet, but in past seasons of my life I was like a carrot and he toughened me up by showing me how soft I really was. Similarly, when I was like an egg He showed me how hard I really was. He can mold us much easier when we’re in hot water.
Hot water can come in a lot of different ways. It’s easy to be afraid and panic when we’re thrown into it, but we have to remember that it’s not necessarily a bad thing. As I’ve been learning the past few years, hot water causes us to be stretched more because our muscles are the most pliable when warm. It also causes us to pray more powerfully and dangerously when we realize how hot the water really is.
But I’ve also realized powerful and dangerous prayers can help us get there in the first place. I know a lot of hot water is coming my way at some point, but whatever the circumstance, I’m asking God to teach me what it means to be a teabag.
