Hello Blooming Disciples, and Happy New Year!
I pray each of your years is off to a fantastic start—filled with prayer, joy, and deep intimacy with our Lord and Savior.
I don’t know about you all, but I am so ready for the holiday chaos to be over and for life to return to some kind of structure (amen? 😅). Don’t get me wrong—I absolutely loved having my children home from school and being able to spend vacation days with my husband. Those moments are precious. But whew… it definitely made it harder to stay focused and grounded.
Over the holidays, we celebrated our sweet baby—who turned 4 after being 3 for what felt like five minutes. And somewhere between coming back home and stepping into this season of “newness,” I remembered something important about myself:
I LOVE TO BAKE.
It’s funny how the enemy works. He’s so good at making us forget our passions, our gifts, and even what we’re capable of. But once I remembered? Ohhh, I was on a roll. I mean everything from scratch—cakes, cookies, cinnamon rolls, icing… everything.
So naturally, I decided that for our son’s birthday, I would bake and decorate his Transformer cake.
Yes. Decorate.
With zero cake-decorating experience.
Bold. Very bold. 😅
I wasn’t worried about the taste—I knew I had that part handled. Moist? Flavorful? That was already in the bag. But decorating? That was a whole different story.
I gathered all the supplies and decided I was going all in. Everything from scratch—even the fondant. Whew. What an event.
Let me tell you… that was one of the hardest tasks I have ever attempted—but also the strongest my will had ever been.
The first batch of fondant? A disaster. I mean, how hard could it be? Marshmallows, butter, powdered sugar… right? What they don’t tell you is that you also need the right humidity, the right amount of oil, and the right balance of kneading and powder.
That fondant came out stickier than glue. I’m talking a full-on mess. Some of my supplies were so stuck together that I had to throw them away. Defeated, I cleaned up powdered sugar from everywhere—table, floor, my soul—and decided to try again.
Second batch? Success.
I figured out the humidity. It kneaded beautifully. I even got the color right. I was feeling victorious. Like, okay Lord, I got this.
Fast forward to decorating night.
I go to roll out the fondant… and it’s a mess.
It won’t spread right.
It feels tacky again.
It doesn’t even fully cover the cake.
Internally, I am spiraling.
My son is excited about his Transformer cake. I’ve spent over 10 hours on this thing. And let me tell you—it was hands down the ugliest cake I have ever seen. 😭 It tasted amazing, but visually? Tragic.
Discouragement hit hard.
“I wasted all this time.”
“He won’t like it.”
“I failed.”
The enemy was busy.
That night, lying in bed, I finally said, “Lord, I won’t quit.”
I reminded myself: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
The next morning, I told my husband how ugly the cake turned out and that I was determined to fix it. But this time, God gently reminded me of something important:
I don’t have to do it all on my own.
I could simply buy the fondant—and doing so wouldn’t take away from the cake or my heart behind it. It wouldn’t make it any less special.
And wow… how many times do we do this in life?
How often do we put unnecessary pressure on ourselves instead of reaching for the help that’s already available to us? How often do we try to do everything alone, making life harder, when we have full access to our Heavenly Father?
That cake became a mirror.
The cake could still be beautiful with the help of something already prepared for me—just like us. We don’t lose value, purpose, or beauty because we need help. We were never meant to do this life alone.
I thanked my husband for his encouragement, but even more, I thanked our Heavenly Father—for the reminder to keep trying, for the strength to not give up, and for showing me that through Christ, I truly can do all things.
To some, this may seem like a pointless story about cake.
To me, it was God reminding me that I always have a source of help.
In this moment, it was fondant.
In life, it’s Christ.
I pray that each of you experiences a year filled with prosperity, abundance, and—most importantly—the deepest level of intimacy with our Lord and Savior possible.
💛
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