Tea Cakes with Jesus—Kate Gaston

“Here I am telling you what I don’t tell anyone“

An Alabama native, Kate was homeschooled before it was even remotely considered normal. She completed her undergraduate degree at Bryan College and went on to graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For eight years, Kate worked as a PA in a trauma and burn ICU before ping-ponging across the nation for her husband’s medical training. She and her family are currently putting down roots in Nashville, Tennessee. Today, Kate enjoys homeschooling her daughter and tutoring in her local classical homeschool community. She also finds deep satisfaction in long, meandering conversations at coffee shops, oil painting, writing, and gazing pensively into the middle
distance. You can read more of her work at her Substack: That Middle Distance.

Tea Cakes with Jesus

You’re knocking at my front door.

I wasn’t expecting you, so of course I’m still in my pajamas.

Cracking open the door, I say, “Hi, I think you’re looking for my sister.
She lives down the street at number 31, with her wool and flax and busy hands.”

You remain standing there on my front stoop, unfazed by my awkward greeting.
You want to come in. 

I give myself full marks for my tidy doorstep; 
it’s well-swept and cheerful; welcoming, even.

But as I swing the door wider to let you in,
I am acutely aware of the mess of things I’ve gathered around me—
dusty participation trophies, moldering stacks of self-help remedies.

You don’t hesitate;
you even remove your boots in case they might dirty my hopelessly smudged floor.

You take the folding chair I offer you;
it’s rusted and uncomfortable;
pilfered from a cold church basement.

I take for myself the seat of honor:
a blue velour La-Z-Boy, covered in cat hair and coffee stains. 

My throne.

As I pour you a lukewarm cup of tea,
you talk to me. 

My answers are curt, churlish;
much like the way I make small talk after church on Sunday 
when all I want to do is put on sweat pants and eat some lunch. 

Even so, you’re leaning in like you really might care.

Before I know it, 
I find myself telling you the things I think about behind my closed eyelids in the dead of night;
the stuff I’m afraid to whisper aloud lest my life be consumed by heartache, despair, and chaos. 

Dear Lord, here I am telling you what I don’t tell anyone;
my deepest carnality passing from my honey-dripping lips into your keeping.

Rather than stiffening in injured propriety like any normal person would, you soften. 

Your face assumes that shape which can only be interpreted as compassion.
And are your eyes filled with tears? 

For me?

And there I was, so damn certain you were some blank-eyed automaton 
handing out bread and fish and platitudes of come-unto-me.

But we just took a face-first swan dive into my heart’s deepest crevasse,
and you’re still sitting there in that rickety folding chair.

I don’t know much, but I do know that platitudes don’t swan dive.

I also know now that I want you to have my recliner, Jesus.

I want to stand up and get out of the way;
I want you to sit enthroned in this rat-nested, broken odds-and-ends, Mad Hatter heart of mine.

You do, oblivious to the cat hair sticking to your pants.

Like any decently-raised southern woman, I want to feed you;
as I bustle to the pantry, I’m aware of all my furniture.

It’s still mine, yes, most of it still dirty and duct-taped,
but it has been changed,
charged with some holy current.

Some gold-veined Kintsugi spell of reconciled redemption 
has been injected through the whole thing.

I smile.

I hand you a tea cake—my grandmother’s recipe—and we eat together,
unconcerned about the sweet crumbs sprinkling onto our laps. 

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Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash