The Story of the Tommee Tippee Cup

When I was a very tiny girl, I had a Tommee Tippee cup, just like the one pictured above.  It has a weighted bottom so that it always stands upright and won't tip over.  I loved that cup and can remember using it as a little girl.  Then my sister used it after me.  My mother, being rather sentimental about things, kept it for many years and when I had my first child, she passed it along to me.  It was a treasure of my childhood and I loved that my son was using it as I had so many years before.

The time came that our little family took a trip to Missouri to visit some friends.  We stayed in their lovely old farmhouse, sleeping on an iron bed in a wallpapered room that time seemed to have forgotten.  The Tommee Tippee cup made the journey with us as my son was only a little over a year old and just learning to drink from a cup.  One afternoon, after a drive to see the countryside with our friends, we stopped in a little town many miles from where they lived to have lunch.  As usual, the Tommee Tippee cup came in with us for our son to drink from during the meal.

It wasn't until hours later when we were nearly back to our friends house that I realized I had left the Tommee Tippee cup sitting on the restaurant table.  When I let everyone know I had forgotten it, it was decided that it was too far to go back and get it.  That should have been the end of the story.

As we went to bed that night, I could not stop thinking about the Tommee Tippee cup and as the night progressed, I became more and more distraught about it.  Hours of sleep were lost while I thought about this little pink plastic cup that had been mine as a child.  It was as though I'd lost my childhood.  I tossed and turned, fretted and worried.  I was really upset.  How was I going to get it back?  It seemed so important not to lose it.

Around 5:00 a.m., with the sky beginning to turn light outside, I began to realize through the grace of God, that I was losing an entire night's sleep over a stupid plastic cup, that it was just a thing, an object that in the larger scope of things had no real meaning.  And I was allowing the loss of this piece of plastic to ruin a good night's sleep and probably much more if I continued on the way that I was.  I remember praying about it and then falling into a sound, restful sleep.

On awaking later in the morning, it came out how upset I had been about forgetting the cup and about my losing sleep over it, but now I was able to say that it was ok and that it wasn't worth the long journey to try and recover it.

Many years later, the lesson about losing what was just a "thing" turned out to be of enormous importance.  In 1999, when our house burned down, it was so much easier to cope with because I had already learned the lesson of "things" versus what really mattered... the people and relationships of those around us, of putting our trust in God to see that all would be well.

This past Christmas,  as we talked about my desire to downsize my belongings, I told this story to my kids.  Then, for my birthday a few weeks later, one of my gifts was the Tommee Tippee cup that you see above!  So now, as I go through my belongings and work at downsizing, I have this cup sitting on my kitchen windowsill to remind me that it is all just stuff.  I can choose to let the stuff weigh me down, to run my life, to keep me awake at night worrying about it.  Or I can let it go and be free to live with focus on the things that truly matter.

Toward a Simpler Healthier Diet

Part of my journey to a simpler life involves making changes in how I eat and drink.  These guidelines

come from the hydration advisor at CamelBak.  I thought that they made a lot of sense and were stated

in an easy to remember format.

▪   Eat whole unprocessed foods, drink tap water.

▪   Enjoy a diet that has lots and lots of plant foods, with small amounts of meat and dairy products.

▪   Snack on real foods, not "snack food"

▪   Support local farmers and eat seasonally, locally and regionally to the extent you can

▪   Get cooking!

▪   Take less, waste less at the dinner table.

Some of these are things that I really struggle with.  It’s so easy to get caught up in what is “easy” and forgo the sound basics of nutrition.  For instance, when I was preparing for bariatric surgery back in 2011, I cut out all soda, including diet soda and switched to water and Crystal Lite.  I also dropped all caffeine except for one morning cup of tea.  I was able to stay soda free for two years, but lately I’ve gotten back into the diet soda (albeit caffeine free) habit.  I get so I just crave it and first thing you know, I’ve gone through 3 to 5 cans in a day.  The carbonation can stretch my stomach, allowing me to take in more food, and first thing you know, my weight starts creeping back up. 

How shocking to also realize that to put 1 liter of soda in my fridge from a water footprint and energy use standpoint uses the equivalent as 340 to 620 liters of tap water!  From an earth stewardship standpoint, that is not how I want to be wasting precious resources.  So a new goal over the next month is to get back to my 2011 habits of drinking tap water in place of diet soda.  I also hope tot drop the Crystal Lite as I just cannot believe that all these artificial sweeteners and chemicals used in such products are beneficial and healthy.  I also find the ongoing use of artificial sweeteners just seems to make me crave sweet things, and that certainly makes the struggle to maintain a healthy weight a more difficult one.

I do pretty well with the plant foods part, though I do eat a fair amount of dairy.  It's the snacking on REAL food and not on "snack" food that gets me into trouble and is probably the other big part of my struggle with weight.  I tend to crave salty things and most times, if offered a choice of candy or chips, would nearly always choose the chips.  There aren't a lot of "real" foods that I've found that can satisfy that salty craving, though I may need to look at home popped popcorn again (not the microwave variety).    

Some days I think it would be nice to simply step out of this current life and all it's issues and step into a new one, with all the foundation already in place ~ the clean minimalist house, the fresh, unprocessed food in the fridge and healthy meals and snacks already prepared.  But then would I learn what I need to along the way?  

Radical Change

I am searching for radical change.  It doesn’t come easily, but I have had glimpses of the potential rewards of this change in my life.  I want my home to exude the peace that I am finding in God, I want it to reflect the calm beauty that I see in God’s creation around me.  I want my home to reflect the purity, clarity and wholeness that can only be found in a life centered in God.  It may sound strange, but I begin to understand why in the Zen tradition of Buddhism, there is a spare-ness, a focus on a single beautiful object.  It helps to clear the mind, prepare it for a singular focus.  While I don’t follow or put faith in Buddhism, I begin to see how this can also benefit our Christian meditation.  How can we focus on God when our mind is continuously bombarded and clouded by the chaos, over-abundance and clutter that surrounds us.  It detracts us from the handiwork of God, from being able to see and experience him through his creation, from hearing his “still, small voice”. 

Henry David Thoreau wrote, 

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.  I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”  

(italics are my emphasis, not Thoreau’s)

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, 

“Be not the slave of your own past—plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”

Jesus told the rich young ruler, 

"You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21)

Jesus also taught the following, 

“Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15)

For a long time, I have been convicted of the need to live with fewer possessions.  There was a time when I looked to possessions as providing comfort and stability in my life.  But surely and steadily, God has been teaching me that contentment in life does not come from things.

As I said earlier, I am looking for radical change.  I not only want to change my surroundings, but change the way I live life.  
~ I want to suck the marrow out of life.  
~ I want to dive deep, swim far.  
~ I want to live, pared down to the essentials.  
~ I want to retreat from our consumerist and debt ridden society.  
~ I want to live sparely, serenely, contentedly, focused on relationship with my maker.  
~ I want to paint pictures that share this deep and abiding peace that God brings, that share his still small voice and make it known.  
~ I want to spin and knit things that share the warmth and protection that God gives.
~ I want to stitch things that share the deep joy that faith in God brings  
~ As a nurse, I want to be an instrument in the hand of God that shares the deep love that he has for us.  
~ As a parent, I want to share my experience of life in Christ with my children, in hopes that it will encourage and uplift each of them spiritually.  

And Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."
"With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." 

~ Matthew 19: 23, 26