The 29th Cupcake

Any of my high school friends would tell you that all I have ever wanted was to be a "stay at home mom". This is the absolute truth! I have found in the last year of living that dream that it's not as glorious as I once thought. The days are long and too quick, lazy and extremely demanding, boring and exciting all at the same time! It is incrediby easy to get to the end of the day and wonder what was accomplished and if God will ever use me for more than ensuring two very clean hineys at every moment of the day! Will I ever have enough of myself available again to be effective outside of my home?

You never know what mundane activity God will use to speak into a dry area of your slice of life! Tonight I was finishing up spooning cupckake batter into liners and I really needed the recipe to make 29 cupcakes. It easily made 28 but I knew the 29th was going to be a stretch. As I began to scrape the mixing bowl with every utenstil I had around, I felt God start to speak to me in that still small voice. Isn't this how you feel frequently in your life? You feel like when you're still required to have something left to give to your kids, your husband, your coworkers, your family, to ministry, all that is left are the scrapings? There is a level of desperation that comes when your scraping for that last cupcake or the ability to bath one more kiddo, write one more report. (At this point I am scraping the bowl as hard as I could with tears streaming down my face feelng as though those scrapings represent what's left of me when everythng i am required fo do is done.)
Then I shifted my focus to my interaction with him; when I need something from God, when I feel like I am scraping and scraping to find him. I want to see him show up in some loud monsterous way but as I kept scraping the bowl, I felt him nudge my hesrt. "See that little bit of batter on that spoon? It would be so easy to look past but there is no doubt by it's appearance, it's taste, and it's function that it is batter!" This just made me realize how much I miss God showing himself faithful in small ways through out my day! Even though sometimes he slips
his blessings in in small ways, they are no doubt proof that he is right here!

So when God and I were finished our little chat, there was a 29th cupcake! It may not have been as big as the rest but i was no doubt by appearance, taste (it was my taste tester since it was anew recipe so after taking a few pictures of it, i ate it) and functon a cupcake! My friend, it's normal to feel like you have nothig left to give, It's awesome (hard and frustrating but awesome!) to scrape desperately to find God in moments of life, but don't miss him in the small ways he is showing himself faithful! He is right there big and small!