Easter Sin and Cake.

It was Easter Sunday.  We woke up and had a sweet morning letting the kids discover their Easter baskets, taking pictures, having breakfast and actually making it to Easter Mass 30 minutes early (!!!) to get our usual seat.  Ian, (unbelievably) sat through roughly an hour and 15 minutes of the wait and Mass....(this is a record for him!  He's usually out in the atrium before the first 15 minutes of church).  It was a beautiful spring day and we got home to start preparing for Easter dinner and celebrating Ian's first birthday with our family.

I put Ian in his high chair at lunchtime and scrape cut up spaghetti and steamed squash on his plate.  He takes a handful, shoves it into his mouth and starts to scream and cry.  Not because it's hot or painful...but because he doesn't want to eat spaghetti and squash.  How do I know?  Because he begans to scream bloody murder while he throws handfuls of food onto the floor.  Normally Ian throwing food on the floor is no big deal to me, he's a baby, right?... but for some reason, this Easter morning, the screaming and the throwing made me so angry, I was just absolutely overcome with this raging anger.  I told him, "No, we don't throw our food."  And picked him up and set him (gently) on the floor.  To which I got more screaming.  We tried again to eat a few minutes later, and it was more of the same, and I was fuming.  I let him scream hysterically on the floor until Rob took over and calmed him down.  Then I yelled at Isabel when she tried to offer her opinion on why Ian was screaming and not eating...that silenced her, but now she was in tears too. 

I went upstairs and lost it.  Okay, it was the first day of my cycle, but how could I have just gotten so angry at this little baby over eating/not eating lunch?  And how could I have taken it out on my daughter, and oh yeah, I failed to mention my lovely attitude toward my husband during that episode...all on Easter Sunday?!?  I cried and cried.  Then I got it together a little and came downstairs and apologized.  But I was OVERCOME with how awful, how ugly I had been,.... the complete horror of the sinful way I had just acted. 

Thankfully, the baby, my husband and my daughter were quick to forgive me.  As I know God is always quick to forgive, if we just ask.

But I could not shake the horror of it all.

Until I read my Total Consecration for Day 14.  You see, on Day 13 you start a whole new set of prayers, so the night prior I had prayed for the first time, "Holy Ghost, inspire us with the horror of sin." (their emphasis, not mine).  It didn't really mean much to me on Day 13, but when I read it on the night of Day 14, I knew darn well why I was so overcome with emotion. 

The Holy Spirit had in fact, shown me the horror of my sin that day. 

Now as to where all that anger had come from?  I don't know.  Maybe it was Satan.  Maybe it was hormones.  Maybe it was staying up too late the night before to make the beautiful cake that I'll show you below, for little Ian's birthday celebration.  The fact is, it doesn't really matter where the anger came from.  It was what I did with it that was sinful.  Maybe God just wanted me to remember what Easter Sunday was all about....His Son, rising to defeat the sin that we continue to stumble into.

Thank you God, for your forgiveness as I stumble every day, and especially on that most holy day.

And now,
the cake....