Birthdays Birthdays

This one's LONG - bear with me.

Don’t you love birthdays? Birthdays are very special to me because since I was a little girl, my mom always made a big deal out of my birthday. Because our birthdays were only days apart, my aunt & I (who only have 5 years between us), celebrated our birthdays together. This celebration was no small thing. My mom would begin making plans weeks in advance. She would decide on a theme, and everything would fall along the lines of that theme. She would also hand-stitch matching dresses for my aunt and me. Then came my favorite part – the birthday cake, sure partly because all of that sugar was like heaven, but more so because I knew that the cake would look like strawberry shortcake, Barbie, etc. My mom has this amazing gift with cakes. She can turn an ordinary square or round cake into the most amazing pieces of art that both children and adults fall in love with at first sight.

It’s no small task – making artwork out of a plain piece of cake. My mom would begin sometimes with several cakes. She would cut one here and the other there and would assemble the pieces to make the base of the cake. That wasn’t it, though. The more difficult aspect was the frosting. That was everything. If the frosting wasn’t done right, no matter how great the shape was, the cake could be at risk to be butchered. So she would begin that process with some white frosting. Then my mom would divide the frosting into different bowls and added several drops of food coloring to each bowl – all different colors. Sometimes she mixed different colors together to form a purple or an orange-colored icing.

Applying the frosting so that it looked just like Strawberry Shortcake or Cookie Monster – wow – that took some time, patience, and really – a lot of love because she knew the “Ah” moment with the kids would only last as long as their stomachs could hold back from devouring the art. She did it anyway. I have no idea how long it took to ice some of the cakes she made, but I can only imagine.

Then, in a few minutes, all of the work she put together would be cut a part and torn into by a bunch of kids who cared more about eating it than appreciating the work that was put into the creation. Then it was gone. Yet, the cake served its purpose.



Just as my mom would take the time, energy, and patience to make cakes these wonderful cakes, so God does with us and with our lives. Before we are in our mother’s womb, he has already thought of and known us.

God takes a piece of personality here and some character qualities there to form me…but wait, he’s not finished yet. Then comes the icing – the physical me. Every intricate detail about me is no mistake. Now, I’m not talking about the sin part of me or the wear and tear of my body. As kids bite into a cake, so life bites into us. We live in an imperfect world, and until our bodies are glorified, we will have ‘wear and tear.’

But here and now, He created me with certain details because He will have me fulfill certain tasks. He knows about the ‘bites’ that people will take out of me, and He knows how I’ll be used. None of it is a surprise to Him because He in fact set it all in place already.

For me to serve my purpose, however, I must be available do what God has prepared for me to do. Can you imagine a cake rising up and saying, “You cannot eat me. I am too pretty to be eaten”? Obviously a cake can’t do that, but it was created for the purpose for which the baker made it. It must fulfill its purpose.

We have been created on purpose, with a purpose and for a purpose. I will never be fulfilled unless I daily walk in that purpose. God wants to use us for each other. At the end of this physical life, he will ask me if I have been used on this earth how I was created to be used. What I have been given must be used for the sake of other people. I cannot sit around for myself in life, then come to Him and say, “Yes, Lord, look at me. I kept to myself all of my life so that I could stay pretty for you.” He will want to know if I used what He gave me to accomplish what He’s called me to do on earth.

As cake is fleeting at a child’s birthday party, so our lives are on this earth. We must allow Him to use us as He’s intended, so that when it’s our time to transition from this life to the next, we can hear, “Well done.”

P.S. Above is one of my mom's great creations. I’m the boy-looking girl with the finger in her nose.

Mom, thanks for taking the time to create these wonderful cakes and for making birthdays so special.