I made a birthday cake today for the first time. From scratch. Don't get me wrong, of course I've made a cake before, but never for one of the girls' birthdays, and certainly never one of those fancy, two-layered things. It was always, "I'll make the frosting but get a boxed cake" or vice versa. But Caeley, undemanding and sympathetic child that she is, requested a "chocolate cake with turquoise icing." And I, feeling guilty that we are having a kinda boring birthday, decided to acquiesce. (She had that big surprise party a month ago, so I don't feel too bad!)
It wasn't until I was piping the number "9" on top of the cake that it hit me. I thought,
It has taken me NINE years to get up the courage to make a CAKE? REALLY??!!! As someone
who likes to think she makes a lot of things from scratch, this was quite disturbing. It was also a lightbulb moment for me. If it took me nine years to make a cake from scratch, and I LOVE baking, is it any surprise that our faith journeys also take so long? Is it any surprise that they all look as different as all the cakes might look if you asked five friends to come over and bake their favorite cakes?
(As usual, it occurred to me that there are some parallels between baking and a walk of faith. Bear with me, as in my
Stock post, I'm drawing some pretty strange connections here, but this is how I roll...)
The first task in baking is making sure you have the right ingredients. In terms of faith, these ingredients include (but are not limited to!) proper formation/knowledge, an open spirit, graces that come from the Sacraments, prayer, and works of charity. But sometimes you might not have buttermilk (let's call it proper formation) and there are substitutes (milk with lemon juice, or seeking out the information from reputable sources.) Just because you are missing one ingredient, doesn't mean you can't make the cake at all. It just means you might have to run out to the store (Church, or to friends who can help you along in the faith, etc.) and get it (or find a substitute.)
Then you have to put them together in the right proportions. That's the hard part, I think. But God
does give us a recipe. In some ways it's a difficult one to follow. Maybe at times it seems like it's written in hieroglyphics, but He does spell it out loud and clear for us if we have the "eyes to see." When we make our faith cake, and we choose to add "too much of this" or "too little of that" (or we so loosely follow the recipe that we really
aren't) and the cake doesn't turn out the way we wanted it to, we can't say the recipe was faulty. On the flip side, there are ways we can add to the "faith cake" recipe to make the end product even better. (I'm thinking here specifically of special devotions to Mary or to a specific saint, extra practices in our faith life that uplift us that aren't spelled out as "necessary" for the recipe.)
It hit me as I was washing up the cake pans, that there are much scarier things than making cake. The biggest one, for me and for so many people, is the journey of/to faith. It took me nine years. For a cake. I was afraid of getting it wrong. Of making something that wasn't good enough. Of ruining a child's birthday. Of falling short of what was expected of me in this little role I play in this world. And taking steps towards God, towards Truth, is infinitely more terrifying. You could get it wrong. (But He's so happy to see you're trying.) You could offer to Him, at any given moment, something that isn't good enough. (He loves you anyway.) And you could make choices that might ruin your day, your week, maybe your life. (But He forgives you and waits for you to get up and continue the journey.)
Lent begins soon, and I will be fiddling with the ingredients of my "faith cake." I will be adding some things and taking away some things, but still staying true to the recipe. I might not make the perfect choices for this Lenten cake. But I guess, like the real cake, the important thing is to just trust the recipe, get in the kitchen, and start baking.
