Tea Before Terrible News

I don’t remember what led up to the sharing of this, but my writer friend, Becky Cox, told me the old story of a minister who came to the door of an elderly woman. “I have some bad news,” he told her.

She asked if he wouldn’t first come in and have some tea. 

He did and when they were almost finished, he asked if she was ready for the news and she said that she was.

Her husband had been killed and he came bearing that terrible news. She said she figured it was something like that so if she did something normal first it would make the horrible news bearable, as in fact it did.