I spent a few hours on Saturday making the cake for this little baby.
On Sunday, with a full belly from our church luncheon, I whipped up the two different kinds of icing that filled and frosted the pretty little thing. My mouth watered with anticipation. I love love love making over the top desserts for special occasions. I rarely make the same thing twice.
But making this darling was even sweeter this year. In my year of being intent, I decided to give up sweets for Lent. During the 40 days, I made it a practice to celebrate Sundays with a small but decadent treat. Easter Sunday I planned to go hog wild, as you can plainly see.
But something happened on the way to Easter Sunday. My abstinence did not my make sweet tooth grow. Color me surprised. My sweet tooth, or my mouthful of sweet teeth, only shrank. I found that I could live without sweets in my house, stashed in my secret sweet hiding places, on the menu and always available. By the time for cutting into the blessed, massive, three cups of butter and five cups of sugar that made up this 6 layer, ten pound cake, my desire was slaked.
I couldn’t even finish the small slice I cut myself.
And that is fine. I could stand to eat less sugar. This was my first relatively successful attempt at abstaining for Lent, and to my surprise I got more than a decreased interest in sweets. I found that I approached each Sunday with anticipation. That I was keenly aware of the date and day and the promised and coming Easter Sunday. In most previous Lents, Easter Sunday kind of crept up on me, like a surprise I wasn’t prepared for. (Because I wasn’t prepared for it.)
The days when I craved sweets like an unquenchable thirst, I was at first a whiny baby. But slowly I came to the knowledge that I was not in the dessert with Satan and nothing to drink but blood from a stone. I had the promise. I had the surety. And I could live without sweets.
And as Easter Sunday dawned, I was ready. I was open and alert and wide eyed. Instead of focusing on the cake and making the day perfect, I found my attention exactly where I had wanted it.
Abstinence from one small thing became a bigger lesson I could not anticipate. And while I surely did want a slice of that yummo cake, more I wanted to remember the anticipation of rolling away the stone.
