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Our first night in Serbia, our host decided to bless us with a full meal. After traveling for the last 36 hours, real food was a gift from God. To top it all off, we were blessed with the most delicious lemon drizzle cake I’ve ever tasted. The same delicious cake continued to pop up. Church meeting? Lemon Drizzle. Hosting a concert? Lemon Drizzle. Visiting an injured church member? Lemon Drizzle. Just because? Lemon Drizzle.
Everywhere we went we heard about the lemon cake. I finally decided to ask my host about it, and she admitted that it was really easy and had become her go-to recipe. Thinking out loud, I shared how the only cake I ever really made was carrot cake. Her eyes lit up and she quickly asked me to teach her how to make it before I left. “Sure, no problem. We can do that.” I didn’t really think much of it until my host stepped into the next room and informed my team that I would be teaching her how to make carrot cake. Now, there was no escaping it, I would be making carrot cake — in Serbia.
A few days ago, my team asked me if we could make carrot cake this week. After all I had promised to make it and time was beginning to run out. I handed over the shopping list and decided I’d try to make the cake on a girls night with our host. That way it would just be the 8 of us, and if I messed it up no one else would have to know.
What I didn’t realize was that our host was wanting to make the cake for our Women’s Night on Wednesday. Come Wednesday afternoon, I’m relaxing on the balcony with a teammate while we sorted out our thoughts for the evening’s teaching points. It wasn’t long before MC popped her head out and asked if I was still up for making the carrot cake tonight.
Cue instant panic. “What? Tonight? What if it doesn’t turn out okay? What if I mess it up? What if we don’t have all the ingredients? Conversions!? What if it tastes disgusting? How am I going to do this?! What if no one likes it?” Despite the thousands questions flying through my head I nodded and said sure, climbed out of the hammock and headed inside to begin prepping the cake.
30 minutes later and I’m struggling. The white table cloth is littered with bits of shredded carrot. Powdered sugar never made it onto the list, requiring a trip to the shop. Internet isn’t working and conversions are hard. The cream cheese isn’t actually cream cheese. And I’m standing at the table shredding carrots with a cheese grater, apologizing every time a piece flies across the table landing on someone. Time is rapidly disappearing. Eventually we managed to get the 2 awkwardly full cake pans into the oven. Noting the time I turned my back to the oven and began working on the frosting that was more cheese than cream. Halfway through I turn around to check on the cakes.
A half baked, yellow-orange mass was oozing over the edge of the pan, lining the bottom of the oven. “AGH! Help! Quick! What do I do?!” We hurriedly yanked the pan out of the oven and sat it in a larger one while my host reaches her hand into the burning oven and scrapes the cake crumbs out of the oven floor. She promptly dumped the half baked cake into a larger pan and shoved it back into the oven to finish cooking. We both took a step back, looked at the cakes, and looked at each other. “Did we just ruin it?” We asked, wondering how the half baked cake would fare now that it had been dumped into a second pan.
By the time the cakes made it to the table to cool, I was done. I’d had enough with the stupid cake, and staring at the uneven, lumpy, burned in places, crunchy edged disaster of a cake that lay before me – made me want to throw the cake over the balcony and be done with it. As for the 2nd smaller cake, sure it looked fine but I knew that once we topped it with that cheese + sugar mixture I had whipped up, it would be just as much of a failure as the first one. Unfortunately for me, there was no time to bake another dessert. There was no time to run to the store and try to find real cream cheese (they don’t have it here anyway). I had to run with what I had. My sweet teammates assured me that it smelled delicious, looked tasty, and would probably be just fine. I wasn’t as confident. After all, who would want to eat that ugly cake?
Before the guests began to arrive, I took to the hammock and began complaining to God about the whole cake experience. I’ve always hated cooking for people, simply because I’m insecure in the finished product. I want to be able to know that it’s good before I share it with others. Baking doesn’t exactly provide that opportunity. Plus, I had really wanted this to be a chance to contribute and provide a pretty looking and nice tasting dessert for my host. But that’s not what I delivered. Finally I asked, “God, what do you want to teach me from this?”
“What you see is a lie.” Say what? The cake is a lie? Well, yeah. When I look at that cake, all I see are lies. Disgusting. Ugly. Failure. And it’s hard to see past those lies, to the truth that hides within. In reality, the cake was actually pretty good. The frosting tasted better after it sat in the fridge for an hour, and the strong cheese after taste wasn’t so strong now that the flavors had blended. Yes, I cringed and turned away when the first people grabbed their slices. But by the end of the night, one of the cakes was gone and I had gotten a request for the recipe. Sure, it didn’t turn out like I had hoped it would, but it wasn’t a failure.
So often in life, I stare at the outward appearance of things, and let the lies prevent me from seeing the truth hidden behind. And just like my ugly cake, situations in life can appear pretty ugly and grim from the outside. They can appear hopeless and leave you feeling inadequate and ill equipped. But the truth of the matter is, those are lies. The reality of it is: God’s wrapped up in our situations. He’s there, he’s making a way, and things are never as hopeless as they seem. He has already equipped us and he’s faithful to give us all that we need when we need it. From here on out, I’m striving to ignore the lies and seek the truth.
But what about that “ugly disaster of a cake” that nobody wanted to eat? The leftovers were immediately consumed by my team, and the frosting scraped from the plate. Turns out it was pretty good after all.
