Making a Cake

For our anniversary I cooked a simple but tasty dinner. I had some time before Grant came home, so I was just idly looking through our kitchen cabinets and found a box of cake mix. I had never made a cake—ridiculous, but true. I looked at the box and thought, How hard can it be?


So I mixed the few ingredients together, got out my spring form cake pan, and dug up the cake stand wedding gift we’ve never used. As I checked on the timer and peaked into the oven, I thought, This looks and smells really good. Maybe I can pull this off!

For whatever reason [perhaps I neglected to grease the non-stick pan…] the beautiful cake I pulled out of the oven would not free itself from the container.

It stuck.

And stuck.

And stuck.

By the time I finally scraped the majority of what was formerly known as the cake from the “non-stick” pan, it existed as a heap—a mound of yellow goodness—on the overly adorned cake stand. Ridiculous.

It was not pretty. In fact, it was quite ugly. Trying to ice it only made matters worse.

I was figuring out what to do next when Grant walked in and—much to my surprise and pleasure—began to laugh hysterically! It was perfect. Laughter is salve to the soul. Having never made a cake before he lovingly assured me, “It’s the most beautiful cake you’ve ever made me.”

It tasted like a cake—moist, warm, sweet, and thick. We savored every bite as we ate it in hand fulls through giggles and globs of icing standing barefoot in the kitchen together. Delicious.

This whole cake-making process is such a reflection of our lives together.

We have this awesome adventurous idea of something. In a moment of spontaneity, we set out with determination, learning as we go. Then something ridiculous happens that—if we were other people in another marriage, perhaps—would ruin the whole thing.

It does not look pretty.

It does not turn out the way we thought.

But we laugh.

We have fun through the process. We enjoy it together. And it still tastes just as good—if not better.

Because appreciating the un-perfect, the disappointing, and the minor flaws in our plans is somehow more beautiful than we ever could have planned or made for ourselves.

You see, with us, God has this delightful sense of humor that blesses us in the midst of perceived failure, and as a result, we trust Him more, we love each other more, and we laugh a whole lot more along the way.

That cake was some of the best I’ve ever had. And, for what it’s worth, the best I’ve ever made.