Just Moms

Tonight I was mixing batter for my second chocolate sheet cake. Well, it takes 3 cake mixes, so I can only do one “batch” at a time. Well, as I’m putting my ingredients in, I realize that I had put 3 cups oil in it by mistake! I was planning on using my 1/2 cup measuring cup and knew I had to do it three times. Well, I grab the 1 cup by mistake and went to town. After I put the third cup in, I realized what I had done! Sigh. So I knew the only thing I could do was…. add three more boxes of cake mixes and make a “6 cake mix” batch. As I was figuring out how many eggs and how much water I would need, I realized something – I had been making my cake mix for chocolate sheet cakes wrong all of these years!!! I had been using less water than the recipe called for! My husband hears my “sigh” in the kitchen and he was almost afraid to ask what was wrong. So I told him. And he says to me “but that’s why people love your cake!” (And the same thing happened to me about a year ago when I realized I was making my icing wrong too! I have continued to make it “wrong” to this day!) I struggled with the idea of knowing that I was making the cake wrong way (according to the box). Up until that point it was “natural” for me to make it the wrong way. But now that I knew it was wrong, I just felt like I needed to change it. But I had to remind myself that doing it a different way wasn’t exactly the WRONG way. This reminded me of how legalistic we can become. Churches are afraid to do things differently because they don’t want to break “tradition”. Pastors ignore the Holy Spirit leading them to preach on a certain topic because they don’t want to stray from their “sermon schedule”. People are afraid to get out of their comfort zones and take a chance on something new, because they don’t want to appear to be weird or different. But if people don’t give up their legalism, they won’t experience the wonderful chocolate cake with icing that God has in store for them!! It’s okay to be different. To change things up. To try new things. As long as it’s not against God’s Word, and the Holy Spirit is leading you to do it, then do it!! So what are you waiting for… make some chocolate cake!