Ugly, Delicious Cake

Hannah and I baked a cake last night (though if you ask her, she says she did it all by herself). It was a double chocolate cake, which basically means it was a chocolate cake with melted chocolate chips inside. Holy deliciousness.

So we baked it up, let it cool and prepared to feast on this goodness. But when I tumped (official baking term) the bundt pan over, the cake would not budge. After poking and prying the cake out of the pan that I promise I prepared as directed, the cake looked like this.

Hannah was concerned that we would have to throw it away because it was not beautiful. But do you think that stopped us from eating? Heck to the no.

What happened next was something straight from an 80s sitcom, but the part of the show where we focus on the moral of the story. Cue the sappy keytar and imagine me channeling my inner Danny Tanner.

"Hannah, cake doesn't have to look beautiful to be delicious. And the same is so with our lives." I kid you not, this came out of my mouth.

For as cheesy as this sounds and slightly ridiculous that I said it to my 4-year-old, this is a profound truth I'm learning these days and hope my daughter grows to understand. Life doesn't have to be perfect or look a certain way to be satisfying. I've spent time with people who have nothing or have far more challenges than most folks I know will ever face, and yet they find life to be a delicious gift.

Perhaps my perspective is all wrong sometimes. Maybe I care too much about what this world thinks about me when I should care more about what I think of the world. Does that make sense? I suppose it doesn't have to. Take that, World.

Today, I'll just be glad to have had ugly, delicious cake rather than no cake at all.

My Girl is Sick

When Hannah is sick, she's quiet. Mostly serious. Still.

These are not words that typically describe my butterfly who flits and floats as her primary mode of transportation and whose sentences carry a melody of whatever made up song she's composed in the moment.

As I hear the rapid beats of the thermometer telling me that her fever is back, I desperately wish that whatever bug she's caught had a face so I could punch it.

My fluffy white robe compensates for my bony body as I give her Momma-snuggles. I feel within me that somehow this act would be powerful enough to just heal her.

But it's not, so I pour another round of medicine and down the hatch it goes.

I stroke her hair back from her hot face, waiting for her to settle back in to sleep, feeling powerless to do anything more than wait.

In her dark room, I'm reminded how God the Father is so fiercely protective of His children. How He would destroy the thing that makes us sick. And how mostly... He is not powerless.