Jesus and Cake

Last week I blogged about heartache.  I cried the whole time I wrote it.  Crying is not one of my favorite things to do.  But I'm glad I did it.  From the comments and messages and conversations I've had since then, it sounds like my words resonated with a lot of people.  Because pain is universal.

Which brings me to Jesus and cake.

I know, I know.  My brain is like a tornado, all kinds of weird stuff whipping around together.  I'll try to make it make sense.

This week I baked a lovely chocolate layer cake.  It smelled so good while it was baking.  It rose beautifully and looked amazing in the pans.  I let it sit on the counter for 10 minutes to cool and then turned my pans upside down.  It then became apparent that I had made a mistake.  I had greased the pans but forgot to flour them.  My beautiful cakes came out with ragged and torn edges.

Sigh.

But no matter, they were going to get stacked on top of each other and icinged (side note:  spell check is telling me that "icinged" is not a word.  But you know what I mean, right?  I guess "frosted" would be more appropriate but I don't say "frosted" I say "icinged").  Nobody would even see the ragged and torn edges.

I then set about using the skills I learned at Pellman's to cover my chocolate cake with chocolate icing.  Because we all know that is the only kind of cake worth eating.  Unless it's chocolate cake with caramel icing.  Or mocha icing.  Or mint.  Let's not even pretend that white on white is a thing.  Because it shouldn't be.

Yeah, except I should have frozen my cake before icing it.  

Fresh cake + icing stiff enough to stay on the cake =

Oh, my heart.  

All my hard work, wreaked.  Shredded.  Destroyed.  Pulled apart.

Then I had an idea.  This cake is not very presentable but I knew a deeper truth:  it was still delicious.  So I turned it into this:

We now have a very fancy dessert called a trifle.  It still has layers like the original cake was going to have, they just look different.  It still is deliciously chocolaty.  Even more so with the addition of chocolate pudding (seriously, you can NEVER overdo the chocolate).  While the first intention for the cake was to serve 8 people, this trifle served 14 and there is still more waiting in the fridge.  This cake didn't turn out the way I thought it would.  It turned out...better.  All because of brokenness.

As I thought about this, Jesus whispered that there is a life lesson in the story of this cake.

Say what, Jesus?  You want to teach me about life with chocolate cake?  Anytime!  I'm all ears.

I think by now you know where I'm going with this.  Life is bumpy and sometimes filled with huge potholes and man-eating alligators.  There are days and weeks and months and even seasons where things aren't going the way we pictured.

The edges get ragged and torn.  Our hard work gets wreaked, shredded, destroyed, pulled apart.  Our hearts aren't very presentable.  But here's the deeper truth:  we are still of infinite value.

We still have our gifts, but maybe the way we will use them will look different then we originally thought.  We are still valuable, maybe even more so because of the trial we have walked thru.  While our first intention was to serve 8 people, we now get to serve 14+.

Life doesn't always turn out the way we think it will.  Sometimes it turns out...better.  All because of brokenness.