Raindrops on Roses

Please tell me you know the rest of the lyrics and are singing them loudly…..

 

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things.Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels;
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles;
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings;
These are a few of my favorite things.Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver-white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things
Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver-white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

I’m a big fan of things.

My favorite things.

Yes, Julie I have favorite things….I have favorite coffee mugs. I have favorite coffee. I have favorite flowers and dishes and shoes. I have favorite pajama pants and t-shirts. I have favorite Christmas decorations, I even have favorite people for pete’s sake. I love things that are pretty. Pretty art, pretty clothes, pretty jewelry….and the list goes on and on.

The deep end?

I recently joined a Facebook group called, believe it or not, “Beautiful Table Settings”… BTS if you will. I know you’re thinking to yourself I have way too much time on my hands, and you’re spot on, ha. This group (BTS) posts photos of beautiful table settings and the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons are evidently their high holy days. The pictures posted on the website were just beautiful! Perfect even!

Table settings to end all table settings.

Guess what? I jumped in with both feet (hands) and surprised myself with what I could do. Give me a few plates and a centerpiece and I can GO TO TOWN. In all the photos on the BTS website, tables were set with a dinner plate, salad plate, charger, flatware, napkins, crystal…. the whole nine yards. AND let me just say that I loved every one of them. Funny thing though….at both holiday meals Chase used the salad plate for the dinner before realizing it wasn’t big enough for the HAM.

But hey, my table made a really pretty picture and that’s really what counts right?

Ouch.

Don’t get me wrong. You’ll never be served on paper plates and styrofoam cups at my house as long as I can physically load a dishwasher. If the dishwasher goes on the fritz then we’ll talk, but for now I will use my real plates, glasses, cloth napkins and be happy.

But truthfully…..somewhere in the middle of all this nonsense is reality. I can’t let my obsession with “things” be more important than people.

My table is never as important as the people sitting around it.

Luke 12:34
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

We Christians love to flood social media with scripture, pictures and words meant to assure readers (and mostly ourselves) that we know the real meaning of Christmas. We faithfully attend our Christmas services and most of us donate to charity…..But still we gorge ourselves on extravagant gifts, food, parties, travel….. our favorite things, right?

Guilty as charged.

I love me some extravagant gifts. I love to give them, I love to receive them! And who doesn’t love a perfect Christmas dinner!…..I’m lucky enough to have grandchildren so it goes without saying that I love THINGS that make them happy! Bring on the THINGS……

No Room for things?

Jack and I recently spent time going through Travis and Reba’s things…. which honestly felt intrusive, even though they are both gone from this world. Things…. things that meant something to them and to us.

And as I looked at a lifetime of beautiful china, crystal…..I realized that no matter if I wanted to preserve it all, I just couldn’t. I don’t have room unless Jack builds an addition on the house to store it all. Since I’m pretty sure that’s not happening I had to walk away……and this made me very, very sad.

My own mother passed away when I was so young that I didn’t feel this particular kind of sadness in 1985. Although I’m sure Becky and JoKay did. And then daddy died in 1999 when I was still recovering from my first cancer episode and I just didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to think about their things…..as I was pretty focused on my survival and my little family.

The truth is somewhere in the midst of recent events (sorting Reba’s beautiful things and my shallow addiction to the BTS website) I realized that when I’m gone nobody will have room for my things either!

They won’t know that mother, my sisters JoKay, Becky, and the infamous Ida L. Andrews (home economics teacher and principal) are responsible for my love of correct place settings, no matter if it’s expensive china or not. I will always break out in a sweat if the fork is on the wrong side. That’s unfortunately not going to change.

Nobody will understand that I carried around copies of Bride’s magazine for a year before choosing my perfect china and crystal and that it was beautifully displayed at Humphries Jewelry in Thayer on a little table with my engagement photo…. which is what we did in 1983.

It’s inevitable.

Someday my family will say ” We love her china and crystal but we just don’t have the room”………….

But guess what? They WILL have room for memories. Memories of meals, of conversations, of laughter and tears. They’ll remember dinners full of conversation and good food. They’ll remember hugs and arguments and the warmth of my kitchen. They’ll remember the tacky Santa that climbs the Christmas tree and the Santa that dances to “Jingle Bell Rock” and how we laughed when Jack teased the grands with Papaw’s fake squirrel that made those squirrel noises…memories made….

Fortunately those things don’t take up space.

There is room.

2 Corinthians 4:18

¹⁸ while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

May we all focus more on the “things” unseen….. the things that are eternal

but for heaven’s sake, let’s keep that fork on the correct side of the plate….