The Ugly Cupcake

I love to bake. You know I love you if I find an excuse to make you food, and especially if I make you something sweet and fattening. One of my most prized possessions is my grandma's dessert recipes - her coffee frosting, her Christmas spice cookies and frosty fruit bars....as the holidays get closer I start to crave adequate time to produce all sorts of unhealthy crap in my kitchen.

The one issue - I suck at presentation. The stuff I bake usually tastes pretty darn wonderful, but usually I lose major points in aesthetics. I was thinking of baking some stuff to raise money for my upcoming trip to India, and maybe I would market the baked goods through a home bakery that I would refer to as The Ugly Cupcake.

That way people's expectations won't be very high.

Yeah. I like it.

Are you an ugly cupcake? I totally am. A lot of times I have sweet intentions and want to do the right thing - but my outward presentation completely stinks. I have an incredibly introspective heart, and if I could just get the stupid words out, I think I could make a difference in the world. Probably. Maybe?

I see strongholds in the lives of many of my friends and I completely, 100% understand what they are going through. I wish there was a chance for me to speak out, to allow God to speak through me and to get past all the sugar coating we conceal ourselves with and really find solutions to the issues going on that are FAR from sweet.

• low income kids that ask me to take them to Africa this summer with my dancers
• self-harm
• sexual abuse 
• violence in the home 
• depression, anxiety, panic
• the fact Winter Oreos are out before Thanksgiving......

These are the things that hit my ministry life daily (well, except the Oreos. That's a personal problem), and I'm praying God will give me new ideas and ways to combat these things. That God will take MY burned up, misshapen, poorly adorned past and use it to whip up a seriously amazing future that will impact lives and glorify HIM. 

This morning I was doing a word search with Sam. He was super impressed that I found "mustard." He was so taken with my incomparable word search capabilities that he told me, "Mommy, you did such a good job I am going to write your name on this paper!" 

And he did. 

I smile when I think of how God has written our names on HIS heart. That the simplest things we do, He is so proud and loves us so. Maybe that's where I've been going wrong - instead of trying to climb some sort of personal Everest, I need to just start with a little dirt hill and go from there. Step by step.

My prayer tonight is that everyone remembers that God can use us, right where we are. Even when we feel we have to produce this sweet layer of something beautiful for the world to see - when we feel that pressure to do something that pleases everyone else........that we will remember just to please Him instead. And that people will remind me of that, too.