For those of you who know me, you know of my passion for baking and my immense respect for food blogger Deb Perelman of smittenkitchen.com.  I’ve made almost a dozen of her recipes, and each and every one has turned out spectacular.

On a rainy Sunday a few weeks ago, I decided to try my hand at a recipe I had eyed about a year ago.  I was craving devil’s food chocolate cake with cream, and this seemed just the ticket:  Heavenly Chocolate Cake.  Take a look, yall.  It’s a giant swiss cake roll.  Holy whipped cream goodness!

Deb’s beautiful Heavenly Chocolate Cake – from her website smittenkitchen.com

So, it turns out the recipe wasn’t over the top difficult (one of the reasons I love smittenkitchen) and was accessible enough to try in an afternoon.  There were only a few things that give me pause a few times while assembling.  How much do I beat the egg whites?  What will hold this cake together if there’s no flour or butter?  Is that what it’s supposed to look like?

Here’s how it went:

An easy start by chopping Ghiardelli bittersweet chocolate!

Stirring the melted chocolate into the frothy egg yolks

God bless my Kitchen Aid, which puts up with a lot of experimenting.  Here, fluffing egg whites.

Folding in the meringue.

The final product for the batter.

Problem #1:  my jelly roll pan is too big for this recipe, making the cake too thin.  (Begin to prepare for disaster).

Oh no!  It comes out of the pan in pieces   I channel Deb’s resolve and determination to make it work.

I mash the pieces together since it’s super spongy and roll it up in the towel as directed.

The unrolled product.  Can I work with this?

Smearing the good stuff on there!  Light yet creamy.

Starting to roll it up.  Dad’s taught me this fine art from our family Peanut Butter Roll recipe.

I own it that it’s not gonna be pretty but I’m set on tasting it after 2 hours of blood, sweat, and tears (probably shouldn’t mention bodily fluids in a baking blog).

Well, as you can see it sliced up okay!  Not bad..

More than that, it was delicious.

Things I learned from the Swiss Cake Roll Attempt:

1.  Use a smaller jelly roll pan for a thicker cake that’s easier to work with.

2.  Grease it with a considerable amount so it pops out okay.

3.  Don’t give up.  Sometimes, a recipe mishap is salvageable.

4.  Now that you’ve tried it once, time to try it again and make it even better

It seems my blog has taken a relatively serious turn lately.

Time to remedy that with some light-hearted observations.

1.  On pinterest and other social media:  why post pictures of freshly-tatted skin?  Ouch and gross.  I’m sure your ink design will look awesome if you just give it a day or two.  Right now it just looks like it burns.

2.  Sometimes I find myself scavenging for savory main dish items for the sole purpose of getting to dessert.  Especially when there’s Easter candy in the house.  Am I the only one?

3.  Duck Dynasty might be one of the most quality TV shows out there.  Everyone needs an uncle Si.

4.  Brands and corporations are taking April Fools a little too far.  Honestly, bacon flavored Scope?  And is this why Google honored Cesar Chavez’s birthday on Easter?

5.  We are on the waiting list for a golden retriever puppy.  Stay tuned!

 

I’ve been covering a fairly lengthy unit on prophecy and Jesus’ fulfillment of the long-awaited Messiah in my seventh grade Bible class.  The students have learned a handful of the 425+ prophecies about the Messiah, the likelihood that any one person could fulfill even ten of them, and have read the life story of Jesus that incredibly fits every last one.

In this study, more than one student has asked a pivotal question — “how did they miss it?”

By “they” they mean the Jews of Jesus’ day, the ones he was coming to first, the chosen nation who was on the lookout for their redeemer.  By “it” they mean how Jesus so accurately fit what had been foretold in the century before his birth.

Without getting into the divine mystery of God’s plan for both Jews and Gentiles (save that for another blog post), I wanted to make two observations about humanity and our responsibility as people of faith.  Primarily I want to address, how can we be sure we don’t miss the person of Christ in our own lives?

1.  Know what to expect without boxing in with your expectation.  Yeah, I know that sounds convoluted.  What I mean is that, as a Christian, in order not to miss Christ, we must know who he is as described in scripture.  Yet, we must not “create” a Christ by too rigidly defining him.

So, knowing the Christ of scripture.  I once heard a peer in ministry explain that the criterion for faith is Christ (sure!) and that the Bible is no criterion for faith (insert divebomb noise).  I wanted to ask, how do you know Christ if you don’t read the scriptures?  Outside of prayer and knowing God personally and individually, the scriptures are the only way we get a full picture of the life, death, resurrection, and meaning of Christ’s coming — not to mention his teachings, miracles, and fulfillment of prophecy.  Perhaps the reason that many of the crowds “missed it” when Jesus came is that they didn’t know how he would come or who he would be, as described in the scriptures.

Now, before you all get on to me about how so many of the Jews DID know the scriptures and were in fact the teachers and uber-scriptured people of their day, let me say this:  in order not to miss Christ, we must not box him into our contrived expectations.  In Christ’s day, many  missed him riding into town on a donkey because they expected him arriving as a military leader on horse-drawn chariot; they denied the crown of thorns, expecting a royal throne over that of the cross.  Today, Christians do the same by boxing Christ into their own framework, making him look and act just like they do.  Jesus constantly surprised the crowds with his teachings and undermined their expectations. We shouldn’t be surprised when we find him where we least expect.

2.  Know the person of Christ, yourself.  If we’re going to look at one side of the coin (how did they miss it?) we’ve gotta look at the other (how did the ones who accepted Christ realize he was the Messiah?)

It seems that throughout the gospel accounts, those who put their faith in Jesus do so because they have taken time to listen to him, to study under him, in short — to know him.  Even now, for the Christian, the way we can be sure not to miss out on Jesus is to know him by listening to him, confiding in him, and following him in our own lives.  Remember the parable where the young women left to get the oil of faith at the last minute?  The bridegroom didn’t forbid their entrance into the wedding banquet because they were mean or bad people.  It was because they didn’t know him.  Knowing Christ is everything.  Press into him and you can’t miss him.

This Easter season, wherever you are in your faith journey, I encourage you to consider Christ.  Don’t let another day go by without knowing him more.  Don’t miss Christ in this most central moment of his life and ours.

I tuned into a radio show this week on my drive in to work, one that I sometimes listen to for its mindless drama and petty “issues” that create what I would consider a “reality tv” effect over the airwaves.  It’s fairly entertaining at times.  Other times it’s vulgar, and I’m out.

On this particular day of the show, one of the DJ’s was discussing how he had a friend who was sorely lamenting his lack of dating success.  His friend was a man well into his 30′s, established in a career, and ready to settle down.  As he described it, the dating websites, bar scene, et cetera, of his world had not yet linked him to his “match.”  The friend was hypothesizing that his lack of dating success was due mostly (if not, entirely) to his years spent living what he termed a “player” lifestyle in his 20′s, when he had treated women like commodities instead of, well, women.  According to him, karma had caught up to him.  This individual then surmised that the only way to find success in the dating world was to call these women from his past and apologize to them, with the hopes of restoring balance to the universe so that karma would release him and he could meet “the one.”  The purpose of the show was for people to call in and agree or disagree with his plan.

I warned you this was reality radio.  Anyway, it took all I had on my way to work not to call in to the producers and get on the air to explain, not that he should or shouldn’t call these girls, but that he did NOT, along with most Americans, properly understand the concept of karma.

People are grossly misinformed by the media and our “I saw a minute clip on YouTube so now I know all about it” culture when it comes to karma.

Karma is part of the Hindu doctrine that has to do with the way you live one lifetime impacting your existence in the next life.  ”Next life” doesn’t mean heaven; it means your next life on earth, as Hindus believe in reincarnation.  So, if you are suffering now, it’s because you behaved poorly in your last life.  There is impetus to behave rightly now, so as to improve your quality of life the next time.  Karma is what determines the state in which you come back in the next life.  Interestingly enough, there is no one in charge of karma (a deity or otherwise).  This cycle of lives continues until a stage of enlightenment is reached, which propels you out of the cycle and into a state of nothingness.

So that candy bar you stole in third grade?  It’s not affecting your meager salary as an adult.  The time you lied to your parents about the car?  That’s not why your engine broke down last week.  Correlation does not equal causation, folks.  And karma, by religious definition, does not play out with immediacy.  So let’s not misuse terms.

Jesus talks about the measure you use toward others being measured back to you.  The principle of “you reap what you sow” is seen throughout scripture and is obvious in the world.  We call it “what goes around comes around.”  Perhaps this is what people are referring at times when they blame karma.

If you want to quote a religious principle for why things happen the way they do, by all means, go for it.  But please make the effort to understand the principle first.  This will not only respect a religion and show you to be educated in terminology, but you’ll be able to use words to really mean what it is that you want to say.

And who doesn’t love great communication?  Maybe reality radio guy could start there.

As much as I love learning and studying, I have found that I really struggle to enjoy reading books.  I will gladly read an article, blog post, poem, or paragraph, but set a novel in front of me, and my mind gives a half-hearted “eh..”  I partially fault all the required reading of higher education between my undergraduate and graduate programs, where I was reading upwards of 400 pages a night at times.  There’s just no time for pleasure reading when you’re up to your ears in Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline.  I secondly fault my own prioritizing, as I would rather be active and working most of the time, rather than sitting and reading.

Where this comes to be a problem is when I go to read scripture.  It’s not that I don’t love the Word of God – I really do.  I have read it cover to cover, studied it in various contexts over many years, cried out to God in prayer through his own words, made side notes in the margins to the point my Bible looks tattooed, and sought the Lord’s wisdom and guidance from it.

I love the scriptures.  I just find it hard to pick it up and read sometimes.  Not because of its contents, but more because of having to sit, be still, and listen.  (Are we picking up on my human frailty yet?)

But I was reminded this week through a whisper from the Lord why his word is so important.  This came to me hours after teaching a lesson to my sixth graders on the Shema.

For those who don’t know, the Shema is a name for a verse in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 6:4.  It says, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD your God, the LORD is one.”  The verse comes in the context of God giving Moses the commandments on Mt. Sinai, and these are the precepts the people are to keep when they go into the already-populated Promised Land of Canaan.  In particular, the call to “hear” or “shema” and remember that God is one (as opposed to many) is pivotal for the Israelites to recall as the cultures they will face in the new land are thoroughly polytheistic.  God goes on to have the Israelites carry out various acts with the commands he gives (think 10 commandments plus 603 more):

• they are to talk about them when they get up, walk, or lay down
• they are to teach them to their children
• they are to write them on their doorways over their homes
• they are to bind them on their arms and foreheads

This is a veritable laundry list of audio/visual/kinesthetic ways to remember the commands of God, the commands which set the people apart and remind them that they belong under his loving provision.

One of the ways the Israelites carried out the part about binding the laws on their arms and foreheads is through the use of tefillin, leather straps that are literally wrapped around the arms and forehead and have a little box attached that contains scripture written on a scroll.  (For a short video on how a tefillin is worn, check this one out).  Jewish men today still wear the tefillin, and during the Holocaust, secret tefillin stations existed for Jews to be able to fulfill this obligation.

I was reflecting on the tefillin during a devotional I was doing, when suddenly the Lord spoke in his still small voice a reality that hit me between the eyes.  Tefillin.  Scripture.  YES.  Now, you’re probably thinking, what does tefillin have to do with reading the Bible?  And I’ll tell you.

Both have to do with remembering the truth.  Because here’s the thing:  if an Israelite neglected to wrap around his or her heart the bulleted commands above, he or she would be apt to forget about God, where they’d come from, why they kept and should continue to keep the commands, and how the Lord had been faithful in the past.  We see that this is exactly what unfolded when we leaf through the pages of Israelite history, part of which includes a time when they strayed so far, the written law of God was lost altogether (not to fret, it was later recovered).

In the same way that the Israelites were to talk about the law, write it on their doorframes, think on it when they woke up and laid down, and wrapped it around their arms, so we should bathe ourselves in the holy scripture — to stay grounded in truth.  To remember where we came from.  To remember why we should follow God.  To grasp the big picture of salvation through Jesus Christ.  To remember how he is always faithful to his people.  When I forget to read scripture, I find my mind wandering.  I find my faith wandering.  I find that false theologies creep in and try to take root.  Then I return to scripture.  I open it, and I remember.  I clear up my foggy thoughts.  I reject the false teachings.  I straighten up my wandering heart.  I have at times, even printed off verses and taped them to my doorframes as a visual reminder of God’s truth.

These are examples

not from my own home

but reminders of God’s truth.

To a modern ear, the Old Testament laws may seem mundane and pointless.  But the Lord knew what he was doing.  He knew we’d need his truth set before us constantly.

And so I must stay in the Word of God.  I must combat my reading-resistant flesh with discipline fueled by the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 119:9-16 (Beth)

9 How can a young person stay on the path of purity?
By living according to your word.
¹⁰ I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
¹¹ I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
¹² Praise be to you, Lord;
teach me your decrees.
¹³ With my lips I recount
all the laws that come from your mouth.
¹⁴ I rejoice in following your statutes
as one rejoices in great riches.
¹⁵ I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.
¹⁶ I delight in your decrees;
I will not neglect your word.

A new year.  A time for re-discovering life goals, re-examining old habits, and re-evaluating priorities.

One of the concepts I try to put into action every year is establishing clear-cut boundaries in various areas of my life.  For instance, a boundary between my work and my personal life.  It’s a rule of mine – no checking work email from home, not on the weekends, not on vacation.  Family time is family time, and Sabbath rest is a commandment (yep, not a suggestion folks!)

Another boundary is date night.  I love my friends and we have a blast hanging out various  nights of the week.  But not on Fridays.  Fridays are specially-reserved date nights for me to spend with my husband.  We guard and protect that time, and in doing so, we guard and protect our marriage.

The area I’m going to work more on is my boundary between technology and normal life.  In particular, I need to be more careful how much I let social media take up my time.  This year, I’m aiming to limit my Facebook usage when I’m at home so that I can be more present, and, well, be a more productive human.  I mean, the laundry’s gotta get done eventually.

So, what about you?  Are there any boundaries you should set up?  In reflecting on life priorities, be encouraged to take the steps necessary to accomplish the things that matter.

Ah, the holiday season is upon us.  Twinkle lights outline rooftops, boxes of candycanes stack high on store shelves (along with the verboden eggnog), Christmas songs play on repeat on every station, and the rush to find the perfect tree and perfect gift and perfect ugly Christmas sweater has begun.

This time of year, though full of meaning and joy, is often fraught with stress.  What do I mean by stress?  Everything from managing travel plans to uncomfortable gift exchanges to tough memories and remembrances of a loved one who is no longer present to celebrate the yearly traditions of hiding a stuffed elf or lighting the Christ candle.  It’s because of these stressors that I’m grateful for the churches who hold “Blue Christmas” services for those who need space to grieve in this time.  No doubt, the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas two-month holiday stretch can be the most anxiety-ridden time of year for many, and having the wherewithal to recognize such is as loving and pastoral as shining the glowing light of Christ’s comfort into a dark world.

Then, there are stressors that are a bit on the lighter side.

For those who may not realize, the holiday season is a lot of “together time.”  Holiday parties?  Lots of people.  Traveling home?  Seeing people you haven’t seen in awhile.  Christmas cards and gift exchanges?  Chances to link people across the miles and across town.  Airports and car rides?  People in close proximity.  Christmas shopping in the mall?  The introvert’s nightmare.  Add all these things to the typical interactions at work, home, worship services, and weekly meetings, and for the introvert, it becomes as overwhelming as Jingle Bells on replay.

Not that any of these lovely holiday happenings is bad or wrong!  But for those of us who need alone time to “re-charge,” (versus our extraverted companions who are energized by people time) we can only find a scarce moment amid the shopping, parties, traveling, and atypical interactions with strangers (oh, how small talk is not the introvert’s favorite).

So, think of us, too, this holiday season.  Those of us who would rather dash through the snow than rock around the Christmas tree for the fourth night in a row.  Those of us who would like to wonder as we wander versus embracing yuletide carols being sung by a choir.  We want SOME of ALL these things, because they are beautiful celebrations of Christ’s birth and the holiday season.

Just…let us enjoy them bit by bit, at our own pace.  Letting us have the space to take it all in will only enhance each encounter and may even smooth over any reindeer games gone awry.

And perhaps, after all, there is something to be said for experiencing the season through the peace and quietude of the occasional silent night.

-An Introverted Elf

In honor of the CMA’s tonight..

I grew up in a mid-size U.S. city.  We had a downtown, an airport, lots of schools and churches, paved roads, bustling sidewalks, and big name department stores.  Nation-wide tours and productions came to town, and when I looked on the map, I didn’t have to squint to find our dot.  I counted myself as a city girl.

When I got older, my family moved to a smaller town that was situated amidst the country.  Note I say “amidst.”  Because we were definitely not “in” the country.  But I found out quickly that I wanted to be.  Open fields, trails, miles of horse fencing, and rolling hills surrounded me and warmed my heart like a steamy bowl of chicken ‘n dumplins on a cold day.  I counted myself a country girl.

As an adult, people would ask if I favored the city or country, and I felt conflicted.  Could I not have a high heel in one world and a cowboy boot in the other?

Then I moved to a big city.

And I learned that I had no idea about city life.  The big city showed me a richness of diversity per square mile I’d never seen.  It widened my view and gave me more faces to love.  In addition, I found a spiritual emptiness and darkness that made me grieve.  You can find just about anything you want in the city, which makes God seem pretty low on the list of commodities.  Turns out, “city life” is a whole other world I never knew about.  There’s crazy traffic.  The busy-ness never stops.  I’m not a city girl.

Last weekend, we made a visit down country roads to the Smoky Mountains.  We wore our boots and fit right in.  The masterful colors of fall were at peak, and the crisp smell of burning leaves settled me.  My Scotch-Irish ancestors had come to this very place hundreds of years ago to settle.  They hailed from the British Isles, and from what I’ve seen, this was the closest they could find to home.  My own visits to Ireland have confirmed that piece of my past that still resonates today.  Rolling hills.  Green pastures.  Comfort.  Home.

I am drawn to the simplicity and groundedness.  I am drawn to working the earth with my hands.  I am drawn to the smell of grass and the rustic charm.  The quiet.  The solemnity.  It is my Sabbath rest.

October is national Rett Syndrome Awareness Month.  And while any syndrome does not define identity, I thought I would take the opportunity to introduce you to my sister, Laurissa, who is very special to me and deserves more than a month of recognition!

First of all, she is special because she welcomed me, the baby sister, into this world with a smile.  She loved to hear me wail and cry as a baby, which, to her delight, was a frequent occasion.

Second, she has taught me many things, like paying attention to details, the all-surpassing greatness of music, smiling in spite of pain and frustration, and the importance of cuddling.  Even though she is the older sis, she’s needed my attention and care, too.  I learned how to change her tapes in the VCR at an early age, later learned how to feed and diaper, to give meds, and to identify cries of pain from cries of loneliness or despair.

Of course, we also knew that just because you’ve got differences doesn’t mean you’re that different.

There’s just something about the connection you have with a sister.  It’s a special relationship that only you know about, with giggles that only you share, and secrets and glances that only you understand.

My sister was born healthy, but the genetic fluke that led her down a forever-changing path deemed “Rett Syndrome” has not held her back.  Her personality shines through her sometimes grinding teeth, wringing hands, and unintended grimaces.  Laurissa has a love of children and animals, a love of men (and good looking ones at that!), a sense of humor, and a passion for chocolate and anything in the form of a cookie.  She is stubborn and demanding, sneaky and silly, truly loving and empathetic.  She loves crowds and parties, country music (to my mother’s disdain), and a good movie.

The great thing about having a big sister is having someone to go through life with, even as distances and circumstances separate you.  As our hair gets darker (with wisps of gray!  yikes!), through the passing of many an October Rett Syndrome Awareness month, we’ll run through this life together, and then the next, hand in hand or heart in heart – sisters forever.

It’s funny how life comes in seasons and swells, times of difficulty, times of peace.  (Insert Ecclesiastes 3 here).

The recent weeks have brought much pain and illness to a beloved family member of mine, making it difficult to “go through life” as normal.  Add other stresses of life, and you’re left in a heap of tears (well, at least that’s how I cope).

After another sad report on my relative’s progress today, I held that internal battle over whether I could handle the difficult moment, or whether I should take the moment and reach out to a friend to help shoulder the burden.  Almost without hesitation, I chose the latter.

Despite my friend’s busy world of two young children, a husband just home from work, and dinner being made in the background, she dropped everything to listen to me.  She wrote down my worries as prayer requests.  We caught up on life.  Then she prayed with me, lifting me up to God, along with all the burdens on my heart.  In that moment, I was reminded of Paul’s direction for Christians in Galatians 6:2:  “Bear one another’s burdens…”  It was okay for me to reach out with my difficult moment.  And it made all the difference.  We are the body of Christ.

Feeling comfortable with reaching out is the product of unraveling a long-held misbelief I’ve had about God.

For as long as I can remember, I have wrestled with whether I should push others away to prove that I can let God be enough.  I thought, that’s what Christians are supposed to do, right?  “Shame on you for craving fellowship with a human – that shows that God must not be enough for you.”  I don’t know where I picked this up, but I held onto it for well over a decade.  An unintended twisting in my mind led me, over time, to force myself to cope alone with God, chastizing myself when I felt “needy” for others.  That drove a fear of eternal life, leaving me thinking I would be alone with God forever in a room, sitting and staring at each other.  Granted, God is sufficient.  God is more than all I could need.  God gives me more than any human ever could.  But that wasn’ t the whole story, and it wasn’t how I was made.

In a time of crisis a few years ago, I finally realized that it was okay to desire the company of others.  When the newly-created Adam was by himself with God, God realized it was not good for man to be alone, so he made Eve.  Whew, so it’s okay for me to have a desire for and be crazy in love with my husband.  We see Paul talking to the Thessalonians about not grieving over the loss of loved ones because they could see them again in heaven.  Obviously, my concern for community and maintaining relationships with loved ones is not an original one.  Two are better than one, the writer of Ecclesiastes pens.  Humans are built for one another, built to exist in community.  We need each other.  And that’s okay because that’s how God designed it.  And finally, bear one another’s burdens…

And God?  Oh yeah, he exists in community too.  Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  In recent years I learned:  I need to quit questioning my desire for community as if it were wrongheaded for a Christian to want.  I am made in this triune God’s image, intended for eternal fellowship with other believers who make up the body of Christ.

On days like today I have to catch myself from going into “isolation mode.”  We are to bear one another’s burdens.  We are built to pick up the phone and call a friend in a time of need, and not be ashamed.  To God be the glory.