I can recall most of the cakes I’ve baked in my 63 years of life, the number is that small.
I once baked chocolate cupcakes covered in peanut butter sugared up icing.
Chocolate zucchini cake was a hit!
I’ve attempted my mama’s pound cake enough times to know that’s not my skill.
Still, I decided to give a day a name, the Saturday closest to my mama’s birthday and eat cake with friends or family or people I’d make friends with on
Cake With Your Mama Day!
Today’s the day.
I’ll go out to the country to the best little not so secret restaurant called Juniper (in Ridge Spring, SC) and I’ll have lunch and then cake.
I’ll soak in the sweet joy of others who think it’s a good idea too.
Celebrate today over cake with someone you love.
Celebrate the legacy left by someone, anyone today!
I scrolled through my podcast offerings needing an accompaniment for my walk.
A walk that would serve to settle me and unravel anxiety before I paint “live” a little later.
I chose music instead and I chose Sandra McCracken.
Her voice reminds me of the music my parents, especially my daddy loved.
She’s a little Loretta Lynn and a little bit Patsy Cline, softer versions of both and yet a voice that’s strong.
When you think of music, what are your memories?
When I hear Edwin McCain, I remember our wedding day. (Edwin McCain is so good in concert, btw).
When I remember my newfound strength as a single mother, it’s Sheryl Crow.
In my car is a burned CD compiled by my daughter. In sharpie letters, it’s marked, “Mama’s Michelob Mix”. Miranda Lambert type vibes when I needed to be a little more free.
If I hear James Taylor, I remember my son as a middle school baseball player. We were on a country road together and he sang along to “You’ve Got A Friend” with me.
Nowadays, I’m listening to Lauren Daigle, Chris Renzema and Steffany Gretzinger.
And Alison, always Alison Krauss.
Sing, it’s good for the soul.
Who needs more advice on being your best self anyway?
“Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.” Psalms 105:2 NIV
Talk is swirling, bad things are coming, violence and threats and better be prepared warnings.
Friday the 13th. A day I used to dread for other reasons, a few of them evidence of crises that in looking back weren’t just on a day with a horror movie predictability.
Horrible things don’t only happen on days called 13.
So, I avoid the warnings.
I pay attention to other occurrences.
The geese just flew over. My mind went to my mama’s voice, no more and no less than a simple acknowledgement to me as a girl and later my children,
“Here they come.”
So, day 13 of the 31 days of taking account of good things is celebrated not with an egg, no bread. Instead, a cranberry orange scone, buttery.
Yesterday, I listened to a conversation about worship music, more about worship than songs.
I learned that worship is not me standing side by side in an auditorium with a stage lit by changing colored lights.
Worship is not necessarily outward celebratory gratitude or praise.
It can be quite the opposite.
Worship is the tears that come when someone shared a kindness or the tears that come when someone is honest about their fears and their eyes begin to glisten, a mirror of mine.
Worship is me sitting in my mamas chair and honoring her and my God by settling my self for barely a few seconds to simply listen.
The geese noticed.
Noticing God.
And worship is me opening my hand, always the right one and saying countless times a day,
I surrender all and all is well.
And worship is the allowance of good things, rather than constant critical condemnation.
A cranberry orange scone for breakfast.
How will you worship in small ways today?
Yesterday, I was surprised by generosity. Someone purchasing art as gifts for others.
Twice in a day this happened.
I gave the giver of gifts a hug, got in my car and she in hers and I sat for a second and I smiled and shook my head in a questioning of such goodness kind of way.
And I said tenderly in a worshipful whisper,
“What a day, all this goodness, thank you, thank you God.
Once again, you’ve surprised me, wow.”
Continue and believe.
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” 1 John 4:16 ESV
Simply to create, I decided to paint one thing every day and I started with cake.
No plans for the works on paper, painted with ease and allowable error and then a scribble signature, set it aside.
Creativity for the sake of creativity and I guess to spread the word about my suggestion others get creative in their own way and also, share a slice of cake or two with someone special on January 28th.
“Cake with your Mama Day”
began on a whim. I wasn’t especially sad and I’m not sure I really wanted cake. It just seemed fitting to eat cake on my mother’s birthday to make it less heavy and more happy.
My mama passed away two days before she was to turn 70 over ten years ago.
Before my daughter became a mama, we had cake one day downtown after work. It was the sweetest day.
Mama was a professional for many years and then, although not at all lucrative, she began to bake cakes for people, the lusciously decadent cakes only her family had known her for.
And something changed in her, I saw her stand before a red velvet cake about to be delivered and I saw love on her face.
Her countenance reflected the gift of being a maker of only something she could create.
Her cake business was art.
So, every year, now on the closest Saturday to January 30th, I invite others into the #cakewithyourmamaday and for the past couple of years, my dear friend Jeanne at Juniper in Ridge Spring, SC (a very cool and yummy place) joins me in promoting the celebration…the invitation to remember your mama or anyone who mama’s or has mama’d you.
Or anyone at all, together sharing.
Friends gather together and dip their forks into cake, conversations about life, love, hope and happiness happen over shared slices of cake.
Cake with Your Mama Day is more an invitation to joy than just a day of enjoying dessert.
So, if you follow me on Insta, you’ve seen I’m painting a cake a day as I’ve come to understand more why this day is special.
I believe my mama understands my desire to keep painting. She sees the sweet release achieved by making something as she saw it in her country kitchen pulling the pound cakes from the oven. She sees and is smiling down on me over a slice or two of cake.
I hope you’ll have cake on January 28th.
Share your photos with us all on #cakewithyourmamaday
This afternoon, I picked my pace up, legs heavy and feet oddly light.
I said to myself, “a minute or two, breathe.”
I felt the lifting up of my feet over knotted up roots bursting through the granite paved trail.
There was a moment I wondered who may be watching. Me, the fast walker turned awkward jogger longed for a trail in a forest, not a planned community of homes.
Still, I sprinted in a way a woman over sixty does and then I slowed feeling even though I was walking again,
My walking was making a greater difference than before.
I’ve been doing some bravery required things, things like being 62 and running again.
Who decides it’s too late, too long avoided to try again…
To run the way you’d run if you’d decided you could way back then?
I think I’ll pick it up again tomorrow.
I saw myself three years ago, lighter in disposition, easier in my movement and somehow optimistic in expression.
Again, I shall be less weighed down again.
A minute ago, I read something that felt like betrayal. I’m moving on, letting that go.
Setting my gaze steady and thinking about moving this body of mine forward and less weighted down.
Isn’t it predictable that I’d love the phrase “noticing God”, incorporate it into bios and hashtags and yet, catch myself off guard when a phrase of truth and clarity comes
And I decide to hold on to it?
“God is always paying attention (to me).”
Followers and collectors, listeners, potential buyers of my art and my words
Caused me to be weary over compiling them, the not yet thousands enough.
So, I left that little compilation of numbers alone
I noticed and celebrated the simplicity of a simple notice.
“Thank you, Lisa Anne Tindal!
I appreciate all your inspiration and insight!” M.H. (a brilliant author)
A gift given to me on her birthday.
“Isn’t it ironic?” A.M.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it’s God.
The same God who provided water to a slave girl trying to escape and a woman enslaved by her patterns with men.
Same God who notices my need to be noticed and says “I see, see with me.”
“Then God opened Hagar’s eyes, and she saw a well full of water. She quickly filled her water container and gave the boy a drink.” Genesis 21:19 NLT
“But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water?” John 4:11 NLT
It’s not popular to be weary over popularity.
I wonder who else feels the exhaustion of self-promotion and longs to simply keep finding, sharing and creating…
To be thirsty not for notice.
Being light.
Because
God is paying attention to you.
In the sweet spot of knowing you’re noticed so that you’re not thirsting for notice of others and more often than before not as thirsty.
Fill my cup, Lord.
I lift it up to your pink sky Tuesday morning telling me I’m seen loved and known.
Over several weeks, I sat at the desk in my art room and pieced together a broken bowl. It had fallen to the counter as I put dishes away at my daughter’s home, a loud crash and pieces and chunks of pretty white with raised polka dots was destroyed.
Instantly, I thought “Here’s your chance, try kintsugi.” (the ancient art of repairing broken pottery with gold)
I laid out the pieces, gathered gorilla glue and thick gold paint and began. It couldn’t be rushed.
It was a thing of patience and phases, requiring me to allow the repair of one section before beginning the next.
Covered in a cloth in case my daughter stopped by, I continued imperfectly because of missing pieces, adding blue from a broken intentionally cup for fill ins and well, just because it was pretty.
Finished, it became a gift to her for Valentine’s Day.
Last week, I heard words that were not new,
“We live in a broken world.”
The pastor added with emphasis in his message on “expectations” and I received the familiar phrase differently.
It was time.
Have you considered yourself broken by life? Maybe you do now. I began to think of other catchy phrases like “broken and beautiful or beautifully broken” and pondered how we can be both.
I sat in the sanctuary between my strong son-in-law and a very large, burly man who sang every word to every song and sighed like a little boy at the passages about God’s love, no condemnation anymore and other promises because of God’s spirit in us.
I thought, “I’m not broken, after all, all along it’s been this world and what it caused others to do to me.”
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19 ESV
Journaled on Monday:
This world is broken and so, things that happen or happened may determine you to be broken. But remember, you are whole, made whole fully and even more whole and unbroken as you allow yourself to understand the difference. You are not broken. The world still is; but no, you are not broken, not you. Not broken made beautiful as much as simply beautiful, redemptively beautiful, completely so.
To say I’m in need of my Heavenly Father, my Savior, His Spirit in me is not saying I’m broken, it’s more of a humble recognition of my identity now, in light of then.
God caused me to consider self-condemnation in my sleep last night. I’d been thinking of the practice of Lent and intentional changes. God had a better idea, told me what I really needed to let go of is self-condemnation.
The thought danced in my mind all night and I woke to consider it and journaled.
Self-condemnation turns me inward, causes me to fixate on my failures. Self-condemnation is not a healthy or even godly self-assessment. Instead, it’s an obsession with myself in a way that’s tricky, makes you think it’s a companion to humility.
Humility acknowledges with reverence the repaired places you were broken, made new, places you were unable and now have courageous abilities. Humility shines a soft light on the places you were weakened by wrong, but now are allowing yourself to grow strong.
Humility says “thank you”. Self-condemnation says you’ll always be “too far gone”.
Happy Place (detail)
I gifted the bowl and later sent my daughter a note I’d saved in “Notes”.
Kintsugi is the ancient art of fixing broken pottery with gold. … Kintsugi reminds us that something can break and yet still be beautiful, and that, once repaired, it is stronger at the broken places. This is an incredible metaphor for healing and recovery from adversity
Strange gifts from me don’t surprise my children and they know the unspoken truth of most of my gifts being gifts with a deeper meaning. No need for spoken explanations, just hope for little contributions to my legacy of love always.
And hope that I see this bowl, others who pass by or stand in her kitchen pause and maybe take a deep breath and rest assured.
We’re not broken anymore. We are beautiful and slightly imperfect, yet made new.
“For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.” Psalm 107:9 ESV
I found two feathers walking yesterday and then a third. The first pair were mostly grey and I held tightly to them as I walked. No pockets in my clothes, I held on, clutching them gently. I rounded the corner to the steep hill and decided to drop them, said a prayer of 3 words, “art and writing” and walked on.
Walking on as I decided against more hills, I let my feet take me towards home. I glanced down in the grassy border and spotted the third feather, a white one. Pristine and soft as velvet, I gathered it up. It was pure and undamaged in a way I’d never seen. I walked on home with great wonder over the assurance that my 3 word prayer had been heard.
I added the feather to my collection, cherishing the words of victory and the promises of Jesus.
Shortly after, a friend I hadn’t spoken to in many months called to say she had an opportunity for me to speak to a group of women in October. “Would I pray about it?” she asked. Two thoughts linger, there’s that open door and I am willing, not sure fully able, but willing. A third, October gives me even more time for courage, grace and healing, God’s wise provision.
“All who are victorious will be clothed in white. I will never erase their names from the Book of Life, but I will announce before my Father and his angels that they are mine.” Revelation 3:5 NLT
What we see as too damaged or defeated in our hopes to keep moving forward, God sees as victory for us, a peaceful one.
I pray you keep pursuing this peace or that you seek it if you never have. I pray for you my prayer for me.
Lord, help me keep walking towards you, towards peace. Help me to remember I am yours.
we run away from our discomfort... but it doesn't leave us. to heal we need to turn around and face it, experience it and once we truly do we are out of it. We heal and we grow.
2 Timothy 1:7-8 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. This blog is about my Christian walk. Join me for the adventure.
Lisa Anne Tindal 