Part 3
From the Yule Log recipe notes: A French Christmas tradition that dates back to the 19th century, the cake represents the yule log that families would burn starting on Christmas Eve, symbolizing the new year to come and good luck ahead.
After baking the Yule Log cake and spreading and rolling it with heavy whipped cream in an inside whirl, my daughter went to work icing the cake to look like a tree log.
When her masterpiece was complete, she thanked me. ”Without you, I probably would have given up.”
Her comments stopped me in my tracks. I hadn’t offered much of anything other than simply being there. I’d been the one to make the mistake of flipping the frosting onto the floor. Fortunately, it had landed like Mount Crumpit, allowing me to scoop off the top of the mountain and then clean up what was touching the floor, saving what was usable for the bark frosting and discarding the rest – – while she stood there laughing (shhhh…..don’t tell anybody this part).
But it sure got me thinking about the Yule Logs of our lives and the teamwork we need to conquer their challenges to reach their summits. I thought of the lessons I’d learned.
- Even if the Yule Log had been a complete disaster, the experience making it was the blessing. Togetherness in the kitchen is sacred, and things happen there that can’t happen anywhere else. There is conversation, laughter, mistake making, and forgiveness.
- The one who reads the whole recipe and sees how overwhelming it will be may be less equipped than the one who has never read it and sees the whole journey as merely a series of small steps. Some of us work on long range plans, some on short range plans.
- Sometimes supporting someone is just a matter of presence and encouragement – nothing more.
- Just because she’d never made a Yule Log didn’t mean she couldn’t turn out a masterpiece. I’m pretty sure Michelangelo had never painted a Sistine Chapel ceiling before, either. He nailed it on the first attempt, and so did she. Not only was this Yule Log gorgeous, it was also delicious.
- I need to stop counting the obstacles and focus on the possibilities. Dollar General sells $15 mixers on Christmas Eve, and they do the same work as the top of the line Kitchen Aid mixers. The gas oven is the same 350 degrees that an electric oven is. There are bowls that will appear out of nowhere when you need another one – some plastic, some metal, some glass. You get a second wind somewhere at the beginning of a long task, and it will see you through.
- Without each other, we can accomplish much more than we can accomplish alone.
- There is both starting power and staying power in support and encouragement from others to make it to the finish line.
- When I wonder why I’m standing in a kitchen on Christmas Eve never having guessed I’d be making a Yule Log, that’s the time to listen for the lessons that life is sending my way through the blessings of my children. It’s in the unfamiliar, uncertain places where we draw on faith and learn our greatest lessons.
- I need to do a better job of expressing to each of my children how very proud I am of each of them and how much I love them. They do things that terrify me and things that amaze me.
- It isn’t luck or magic that is needed for any of this. It’s prayer and divine intervention, and they are not the same things.
In the years ahead, my hope is that the moments of making this Yule Log burn warmly, living on as embers that remind us that the living of life is in the journey, and it isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes each other, and it takes willingness and courage. It takes a lot of work, and there will be mishaps. It takes forgiveness and laughter. But most importantly, it takes faith, hope, and love.
8 O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.
Psalm 34:8
Common Threads 