Every other month the women of my church gather for a covered dish dinner, a devotion and time to plan our community outreach efforts. Yesterday I wasn’t feeling terribly creative about coming up with a dish to take, so I opted to mix up a pan of brownies. You CAN’T go wrong with brownies.
Except that my 9×9 pan was missing. (Where did I leave it?!?) So I dumped the batter into a 9″ round pan and baked it before work. At home briefly before heading to the church I decided to “dress up” my brownies by popping the cake out of the pan and putting it on a pretty glass stand. Well that’s really plain.
Frosting! I had some cream cheese, raspberry preserves and powdered sugar. Voila! A lovely, creamy, yummy frosting. If only I had some real raspberries for garnish . . . hey, I do! My raspberry brambles have just started producing. So I made a little pile of fruit and thought that what it needed was some mint lives. Oh, yes! I have mint growing in one of my flower beds.
So I went from plain brownies to this lovely confection. Not because I’m talented or a marvelous baker or a great planner. Simply because I used what I had at hand to create something that I thought would be pleasing to my girlfriends.
How many times do we think we don’t have the capacity to do something–we don’t have the time or the talent or the money. Except we do, we just haven’t looked around us. Sometimes I think I’m wasting my time writing when it may come to nothing. I wish I had more resources to make me more successful. Only I do have the resources. I just sometimes get so busy thinking about what I don’t have that I forget about the berries in my backyard.