Several weeks ago I was preparing my usual afternoon tea. I keep my favorite teapot, cup, saucer and dessert plate all together on my counter in a handy place. Usually desert is a chocolate chip cookie (or two).

I had poured hot water into the pot and reached for the lid. The pot cozy that a friend made for me years ago was sitting close by. Teapot cozies really do help keep the pot hot much longer. 🙂

Anyway, as I reached for the lid, I made one of those mid-air mind changes and went for the cozy instead. As my hand swooped to the lid and then zoomed on to the cozy, I grazed the lid and it went flying off the counter and landed on the tile floor.

Why was I trying to reach for both things at once? I have no clue. This was my time to relax, it wasn’t as if I was rushed.

I stood clutching my cozy, devastated.

I mourned that l had ruined something that I enjoyed so much. I have other pots. But this was my favorite. I never throw away anything that I may use later in a still life, so I gathered up the pieces. It hadn’t broken into as many as I feared. I was amazed to find the knob on top (but no longer on the top) in one piece.

I remembered that my husband believed J.B.Weld could fix anything. If anyone would know, he would have.

As I mixed the messy stuff I wondered why they didn’t make it in colors or at least white? It doesn’t dry and disappear like Elmers does. I read on the package that one of the two part mixtures has steel in it; reason for the dark color and its strength. My bright yellow teapot would have the dark stain of black epoxy around the knob. I mourned all over again about what I’d done. It wouldn’t be as pretty now. Did I still want it sitting on my counter? The directions said after twenty-four hours the epoxy  would be permanent. Good as new. Really?

As I carefully put my lid back together, I thought about how my favorite pot may not be perfect anymore, but it would work as perfectly as before. I thought about myself and people in general. There are times when I’m ‘broken’. But do I stop writing, painting, keeping my yard and being active in church?

Just as the epoxy needs twenty-fours to be effective, sometimes when something breaks us, we need to take that twenty-four hours to mend and rest before we can work effectively again. As long as I have the glue of church, family, friends and work, the source of my ‘color and strength’, I can keep mending the breaks that come along. Wouldn’t it be a waste if we couldn’t put ourselves back together when something or someone breaks us? At least our cracks and breaks don’t show outwardly—we don’t have the dark stain of glue showing where we’ve been damaged and mended.

My imperfect teapot sits in the same spot it’s always claimed. I am reminded now, every afternoon around 2:00 o’clock that people or things don’t have to be perfect to work perfectly.

 Have a great day and keep God first in your plans,

Mare