Today I am making a birthday cake for my son’s sixth birthday. I have never before left a cake to be made until the day of a child’s birthday, but this one is literally sitting in my freezer waiting to be decorated just a few mere hours before his birthday dinner. And do I have a good reason for being this late to the party? Did I procrastinate and not prioritize my time well this birthday week? Have I just been too swamped with doctor’s appointments and counseling sessions and laundry and life to get the cake done the day before as I have for every other child for the past how many years? Nope. The answer is far simpler than that. I did not bake and decorate my son’s birthday cake in advance because I simply didn’t want to. And I mean I didn’t want to.
Now, I know what you are thinking, what kind of mother doesn’t
want to prepare for her child’s
birthday? Well, ding, ding, ding! That would be me. Right here.
Sitting on my couch, typing on my computer, waiting for the crumb layer
of frosting to freeze so that I can hopefully decorate the final product before
it is time to pick people up from school the day of the child’s birthday. Yep, me.
Awful as that sounds, I am not afraid to say it. But mainly because I am learning a lot from
that rotten-mother attitude and thus feel the need to claim it so I can share
it.
Truth is, this cake is the most emotionally difficult cake I
have ever made in my life. Possibly one
of the most difficult things I’ve
ever done in my life. But I am finding
it may also be one of the most spiritually satisfying ones as well. You see, my son and I have been going head to
head in our current emotional battle for his heart for about three weeks now and
I am simply worn out. I’m done. I’m exhausted. I’m tired, I’m weary, I am further down in
the dumps than the bottom of the grime and I just don’t have anything
left. I feel like I have tried
everything there is to try – every effort, every trick, every method, every course of action I can think of to show
my child how much I love him and how much I want him to let me love him, but he
just won’t do it. He just won’t let me
in and he continues to purposefully sabotage his own happiness at every
turn. And I just can’t take watching it
anymore. It is killing me. My heart breaks for him and at the same time
I get so frustrated and so angry at his dang stubborn hard-headedness that I
just want to scream – and that my friends is absolutely no motivation to create
a fun birthday cake for the kid.
None. As a matter of fact it
actually serves as quite the deterrent for creating said cake if I might state the
obvious.
So, that is how I got here.
The day of my son’s birthday and no cake to show for it. Well, yes, I baked the cake. And I planned the cake. I have now actually made the frosting for the
cake, but still, I am ashamed to say that I am really finding no joy in this
process. Typically, I get birthday cakes
finished a day ahead because, honestly, I’m too excited to wait. This one, though…. Nothing. Nada.
Zilch. Wait, that’s not entirely
true… I do have exhaustion and frustration.
And a deep down desire to not make a cake that will ultimately provide
one more opportunity for my child to push away the love of his mother that he
so desperately wants and needs but cannot bring himself to accept. And so, the cake is not finished. And I am having an incredibly difficult time
putting it together knowing full well that doing so is most likely setting
myself up for one more illogical, unfathomable, heartbreaking rejection from
the son I simply want to love like Jesus.
But there’s the catch.
I’m not Jesus. And as much as I
want to, and as hard as I try to, I can’t truly love like Him either. Because you know what? Jesus would have the cake already finished. He would have completed it the same way for
this child as any other. In this
circumstance and in any other. He would have
been tempted to shy away, He would have been tempted to hold a grudge, He would
have been tempted to make every effort to guard His heart and manipulate the
situation to keep Himself from getting hurt, but He would have made the cake
the same way for this child as any other.
Because Jesus can love like
Jesus because Jesus is LOVE. And love doesn’t shy away from the hard stuff.
The night before Jesus was
crucified He washed the feet of His disciples.
ALL of His disciples. The thirteenth
chapter of John tells us that Jesus was very aware of Judas and his impending betrayal,
and yet Jesus washed Judas’ feet along with everyone else’s. There was no slighting that one man. There was no turning away from the risk of
being hurt. There was no judgment, no dismissal,
no condemnation. And yet, Jesus knew.
He knew! Jesus knew what was coming. That Judas would
turn on Him, that Judas had held his heart hard for the entire three years they
had been together. Jesus knew everything, and yet He knelt on the ground,
humbled Himself and washed Judas’ feet right along with everyone else’s. Why?
Because all He wanted to do was love Judas like Jesus. It didn’t matter that Judas didn’t get it,
Jesus did. And He just kept loving.
And that is where I find myself
deeply humbled. I love my son. I love him more than anything. But I also battle the oh so many days that he
makes it oh so difficult. I don’t have
the answers. I don’t know the fixes. Most days I feel like I don’t even have a
clue, and I probably never will... But I
also know that I as much as many circles as I run with my son, I am just like
him.
Day in and day out he has the
ability to make me feel rejected and hurt and frustrated and angry because he
just won’t let me love him, but I do the
exact same thing to God for probably the exact same reasons, How many times do I reject the simple,
no-strings-attached love that the Father has provided me? How many times have I decided to do it my
way, not because it was necessarily better but because it was mine? How many times have I thrown God’s love
back at Him because it is uncomfortable to let my guard down, scary to open
myself up to new situations or I’m just down right too stubborn to change the
way I’ve been doing something thus far?
As stubborn as my son can be, I
am just like him. And I have an awful lot in common with Judas
Iscariot too. Jesus just wants to love
me. He has every reason in the book to
skip me over, to find me unworthy, to get frustrated with my stubbornness, to
find fault in my selfishness, and to simply give up on me because He is tired
of banging His head against the wall known as my free will. But He never does. And its been forty years! Not just three. Instead, He does just the opposite. He opens His arms wide and waits for me to
run back into them every time. He speaks
softly and lovingly no matter how often I drown him out or simply don’t listen,
or pretend that I know better. He waits
for me no matter how long I tarry, and no matter how many times I screw up, He
is willing to bake me a birthday cake the same as everyone else’s.
And that is what I am doing today
too. I could sit here all afternoon and
list off ways my son and I have battled the last three weeks, but that gets me
nowhere. It is like spinning my wheels
in mud. Or I can get up off this couch,
get his cake back out of the freezer and decorate it as I began planning a
month ago. Ultimately, it’s not about a
cake. It’s not about bumping heads, or
being rejected or accepted. It’s about
loving like Jesus. And Jesus doesn’t
give up on us – no matter how long the wait or how hard we resist. And that
is where I will take my stand for my son today – fighting for his heart and for
our relationship. And beyond all else,
that is why I am so thankful that my Lord and Savior is standing beside me as
my guide, because He is the only way I can do this. And I’m not just talking about decorating a
cake…
“A new command I
give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are
my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:34-35
