Like a watered garden


Yesterday was a special day. We celebrated our oldest daughter’s fifth birthday! It is amazing to think that we actually have a five-year-old now! As I was preparing for the birthday, I had a neat experience that I wanted to write down, because it really made me stop and think about how blessed I am.

Of course one of the best parts of getting ready for a birthday is thinking about what kind of cake to make! I had the perfect cake planned out in my mind. I was going to make a beautiful princess crown complete with “stained glass” cookies to surround it, and it was just going to be marvelous for her. I had it all planned out.

But our oven broke. And we can’t exactly afford the repairman at the moment, lol, so we haven’t gotten it fixed yet. (Have to get the van repaired first.) :) But in planning out the cake last week, I forgot all about the non-functional oven until we were getting ready to make the cake. As the realization hit me that I couldn’t follow my own plans and make my perfect cake, I felt discouraged. It was Sunday night, and I wasn’t going to go shopping for anything else.

I said a prayer for help, because I really wanted to make this birthday special! It was her fifth, after all! I wished I could just have a working oven and make it like I wanted. But as I prayed for help, peace came to my mind. My mind was inspired with ideas that I could use instead, that would be just as fun, as long as I was willing to let go of my own plans. :) I could make a rice krispy treat cake…shape it and frost it how I wanted, or make a cake out of ice cream! Lots of fun ideas started to pour into my mind. I was excited.

However, the coolest part of the cake was still unsettled. I could figure out how to make the crown, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the stained glass cookies that I really really wanted to make. They were just so neat! They would be so perfect! Oh why couldn’t my plans work out so I could do this good thing and give my little girl the cake I had planned on?

Well, as I tried to pray some more and ponder some more, as I quieted my mind down, a new idea came to me. An idea came so clearly to my mind that I had never thought of before. I was inspired with an idea, but in order to do it, I had to be willing to let the stained glass cookie thing go. It was a different idea, for a different cake… a little spring garden cake. I couldn’t melt any candy in my oven, but I was inspired with a way that I could melt and shape it over the stovetop.

The cake turned out very cute and my daughter was thrilled!

But as I was assembling my darling little garden, I was touched with a few thoughts that I wanted to write down.

I had started out with my own plans. I had a vision of how things would be in my mind, and I had made all the preparations for it, and I just knew it would be great! But then something unexpected changed things so that I could not proceed with my plans. It was difficult for me. But I prayed for help, and though I couldn’t see the end result right away, I was inspired and blessed with new ideas, and the outcome was even more perfect for my daughter than the plans I had originally made.

As I stepped back and looked at my little garden cake, I was reminded of a few verses from Isaiah. In Isaiah 58, he talks about what will happen when you follow the commandments, and follow the Lord, in appropriate and acceptable ways:

8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward.

9 Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am...

11 And the Lord shall guide thee continually . . . and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

I feel truly like, in my own life, when again and again my own plans have not gone the way I had wanted, I have called, and He has answered. I have cried, and He has said, “Here I am.” (And not only with the cake incident.) Though things have often turned out differently than I had planned, as I have tried to follow Him, He has truly made me like a watered garden. Things have ended so much better than I could have ever envisioned. I feel blessed beyond expression for His guidance and help in my life, and for all that He has given me.

Here is the evidence of my own “watered garden:”



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