The Happy Cake

Sounds like a children's book doesn't it? Yesterday I was baking a cake from scratch. It was the first time in two years I baked anything more complicated than canned biscuits. I made a rum glazed pound cake from a Cooking Light cookbook that I am currently crazy about. As with all cakes from scratch it was a fairly labour intensive process including injecting rum glaze into the cake with a flavor injector (think large syringe) and poking holes in the top then pouring glaze over it so that it soaked in. While making this cake I lost count of the number of times I thought to myself, "I am ridiculously happy right now."

The first week after I quit my job I was very busy just disentangling myself from that job. Equipment had to be disassembled and returned, every piece of paper that had anything sensitive on it had to be burned, there were emails to field and phone calls to make. It was amazing how much work there was to stop working! This week, however, I am starting to do my housewifey things again. Little by little rooms are being properly cleaned, each night there has been a healthy meal made from scratch and no fast food has been bought to compensate from the lack of anyone having the time or the ability to feed the family. I'm starting to feel normal again. The constant stress that I was under for two years has evaporated.

Don't get me wrong. There is still stress. I have a budget to balance and then maintain, I have an 11 month old grandson that I'm very involved in caring for, I have multiple personal relationships to heal, I have menus to plan. There is stress. But it's a good stress. It's stress I can handle because it is related to my obedience to God.

In the last weeks of the emotional coma I mentioned before, I read something on Facebook that in an odd way was the catalyst for the meltdown that led to my returning to being a housewife. It said, "You were created for a purpose. Doing anything else will never make you happy." At the beginning of 2004 our entire church read The Purpose Driven Life together. It was called the 40 Days of Purpose. I learned so clearly that all the dreck my mother had tried to instill in me my whole life about women needing to get advanced degrees and have careers to be useful and worthwhile was just that, dreck. Nonsense. God created me to be my husband's helpmeet. His partner. My role was to care for him, our home, our children and our marriage. And yet without my even noticing it, the devil snuck in and for two years had me convinced I had to have an outside, paying job. It never ceases to amaze me how someone who knows just how sneaky the devil is, still doesn't notice when she is being manipulated by the father of Lies.

But now I'm seeing more clearly. I'm daily remembering that God created me for a purpose and the purpose is to be a Keeper at Home. A Guardian of my Home. Baking a cake from scratch may not seem like an act of obedience but it is. All six of us have a healthy sweet to nibble that isn't filled with chemicals or preservatives and is in fact a low fat dessert. Not a big deal on it's own but certainly a small step in my walk to be what I was created to be. And it starts with a happy cake. Well, the cake may not be happy but the baker sure is!

Teachable Moments

I just had lunch with a friend of mine, Issa, who is on jury duty not far from my house. I actually hadn't seen her in quite a while, mostly because of that emotional coma I just woke up from. There were five of us at lunch, Issa, Sweetpea, her friend Jess and my daughter in law Bree. It was an unexpected teachable moment with no actual teaching involved. Issa and I had a lively little discussion about waiting on God's timing. My position is God isn't necessarily going to direct your every little move. He gave us free will for a reason and, while I believe that you should always seek His will for your life, I'm not sure that every single decision or action should be postponed until you are sure you have His timing clearly in your mind. The subject was engagements. I'm of the mind that if God has given you the mate that you are sure He wants for you, what more is there to wait for? What possible benefit could there be for putting off, possibly indefinitely, getting married because you want to make sure you have His timing? God said be fruitful and multiply which you cannot do until you actually get married. Issa's position was that getting engaged and married is too big of a decision to make unless you are sure what God's timing is.


It was interesting. She and I went back and forth several times on the subject. We never raised our voices. This was not an argument or fight. It was two believing women with differing opinions and it was glorious! Sweetpea, Bree and Jess are about six years younger than Issa and obviously many more years than that younger than me. It was good for them to be able to see that two believers can believe in the same God, know the same Saviour, read the same Bible and have very different opinions on a spiritual matter. They also saw that we both were seeking our final authority from Scripture and at the same time they also saw that ultimately the major decisions are available for debate by us but are to be made by our husbands and fathers depending on which one you are living under the headship of.


It was one of those things we mothers know so well. Just because we didn't actually say "and the lesson to be learned here is....." doesn't mean that a lesson wasn't taught. More lessons than most people realize are taught by what you are observed doing than by the words that come out of your mouth. 1Peter 3:1-2 states this very clearly. Our actions more than our words reveal the contents of our hearts.

Teachable moments. Never let them pass by without taking advantage of them.

Listen or else! (part 0ne)

I feel as if I've woken up from a functioning coma. As if the last two years I've been walking, talking and interacting with the world but essentially in a coma. Quite frankly the end of this coma has been a waking nightmare. I've long believed that God will not necessarily guide you down the correct path but if you go down the wrong one He will pull you back. Sometimes forcefully. Two years ago I looked at our financial situation and made a truly stupid decision. I listened to the world and took a paying job. The first job I took was working for a reservation service out of my home. This seemed ideal for someone as committed to home as I profess to be. However, it paid very little and the hours were restrictive. More specifically the time I was "on the clock" I was tied to my desk. computer and phone. The only upside to being at home was the commute. Then I went to work for a large health insurance company. During my initial interview I was told that after six months most workers in this department were strongly encouraged to telecommute. That seemed like a dream come true! The pay was nearly three times the other job and the hours would be flexible. As long as I put in the total hours it didn't really matter when I worked. However, that six months ended up being more than a year and there were major changes in our home in that time. My son rather unexpectedly got married (and the foundling became my daughter in law) and three months later my wonderful grandson was born. Because all of this was very unplanned, they live with us until they can afford to move into their own home. Having them in the house is both a blessing and a trial as is usually the case when multiple generations share the same roof.

Around the time my grandson was born, I started hearing from God on a very specific subject. I also starting ignoring God on this very specific subject. The subject was and is Titus 2 and the eight commands God gives to women. These eight commands are in addition to the 613 commandments in the Old Testament and they are for women only. When God puts a burden on my heart I know it. It is always clear. The problem is, this time I chose to ignore the burden. Ignore God speaking to me. Ignore God nudging me. So He went from nudging to pushing to shoving.

The thing I learned most is: Listen or else! And the "or else" can be agonizingly painful. God may not punish us here on Earth (and for those of us who know Jesus as our Saviour, we will not be punished after we leave this Earth) but He will most certainly allow adversity into our lives to get a point across or get our attention.

I'm going to elaborate on this concept as I learned it in the past two years. It will probably take multiple posts but since so far no one reads this except me, so what. When I'm done writing it all down, hopefully I will find a way to use it to help other women avoid the painful, sometimes excruciating, lesson that I learned the hard way.