In July of 2019, we began publishing this blog in earnest and sharing it with you as subscribers to our newsletter. For the first couple of years, publishing a blog biweekly as we do now proved a daunting task, but we persisted and have published at least 223 to date.
The first was titled, “Two Visits” and juxtaposed a visit to a typical Orange Mound rental, with insects, rodents, and decay, inhabited by many of the ladies we serve, and the environment we hoped to create at the My Cup of Tea House. We have profiled numerous Orange Mound ladies, sometimes revealing their names with permission, and on other occasions discussing their challenges and triumphs anonymously.
Another topic of more than one blog is the misconceptions some of us held about Orange Mound and its residents and how much we hoped to teach them only to discover we are most often the students. Praising our deserving volunteers and donors, housing, voting, education, relationships, gardening, life lessons, and spiritual growth are among the subjects we have highlighted. We have consistently incorporated verses and passages of Scripture guiding our decisions and informing our perceptions.
The purpose has never been to write award-winning prose or to simply fill empty space in a newsletter template. The goal has always been to provide a glimpse of the obstacles faced by women living at or near the poverty level and the daily grind required by all – ladies and on-the-ground supporters – to realize meaningful change. The truth is that our descriptions rarely do it justice. The highs are often higher and the lows lower than we are capable of effectively articulating, but we try.
We try because we want you to understand how desperate the circumstances often are for Orange Mound women and how the simple act of buying a box of tea helps. We want readers to know that the dire predicaments of many in the community are not the result of a single, random catastrophic event. For most, despair spans generations, and therefore solutions do not come quickly. Most importantly, we want you to know without a doubt that God is at work in the lives of the ladies, the volunteers, and the Orange Mound neighborhood, even when we can’t see it clearly enough to write about it.
Perhaps you are like us; every couple of weeks we draft a piece and at 6 a.m. every other Tuesday it lands in your inbox. We, and maybe you, compartmentalize and see the writing or reading as a task to check off our list, a single event for which we receive some level of satisfaction because we completed it. It is possible there is an inspiring story, a verse of Scripture, or a humorous anecdote that brightens our day and assures us that My Cup of Tea is a worthy endeavor.
Consider, though, that each 500-1000 word blog post is a short chapter of a true story. Together, they are a work of nonfiction that so far has reached more than 180,000 published words. Collectively, they are a gripping saga of tragedy, triumph, forgiveness, and redemption. It is an account of a God who never leaves us or forsakes us, regardless of our zip code or our means.
These posts are the story of the sisterhood of Orange Mound and East Memphis ladies striving together, the vision, persistence, and faith of the My Cup of Tea founders, a community steeped in rich culture and history determined to return to its glory days, and it’s your story too. Every box of tea purchased, donation given, social media post shared undergirds the mission of My Cup of Tea. We are stronger and better servants because of you.
“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
