a lesson in the dough

This weekend I set out to do something I had never done before. As my previous baking adventures started due to a deep craving, this time I was craving croissants. I didn’t quite have the time for it, but I really wanted some and desired to power through anyway.

I started late Sunday afternoon. I mixed the flour with the yeast, sugar, salt and bits of butter, and slowly the beginnings of dough began to form. I left my dough to rise and then returned to it for the exciting butter block. Perhaps this is where I messed up. Or maybe I messed up much further on, adding in the butter last when I should have mixed the flour and butter first. 

After adding in the butter block, letting the dough sit, and then returning to shape them, I was cautiously optimistic. I didn’t think I had messed up until I took the croissants out of the oven. They were yellow, not the dark rich brown they were supposed to be. They tasted too much like flour because I kept dusting my wooden cutting board.

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I had some dough leftover and somehow made tolerable cinnamon buns, misshapen but still tasty. (Thanks to the wonder of cream cheese frosting!)

Again and again and again, I’ve come face to face with this lie that I believe: that I’m a failure.

It may sound silly. We all have lies we believe. Lies we act out of, whether or not we acknowledge them. But this one has been surfacing again and again since college. It has pervaded all areas of my life: schoolwork, friendship, career, even baking. Everytime I’m confronted with failure, a normal part of human life, I am tempted to believe that I am a failure.

Some are easily able to separate a failing from themselves, but that is not me. I was deeply disappointed in my failure to make croissants. (Though my dad did think they were okay. Thanks dad!) Part of it was definitely how long it took. But the other part of it struck that part of me with that false belief of failure.

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David Benner has a book on the false self and the long journey it takes to the true self. The true self isn’t just a self that doesn’t believe in lies, but rather doesn’t live them out, and is therefore able to rest in God’s love for who they are.

I have a tendency to hide from these revelations my false self gives me, so in a way (a painful way), it comes up again and again.

For all you fellow bookworms, Pastor Tyler Staton should come out with his book on the false/true self in a year or so.

What’s that line about recovery? The best way to solve a problem is to admit you have one.

There’s this quote that I love by Parker Palmer about the soul. 

“The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek.”

Perhaps my baking adventure is a call to sit with God and listen to what He may want to say about my soul. This idea of repentance is not necessarily about just feeling sorry for sin, but changing your mind AND turning away. 

In repentance, I can give God this lie and He can give me the truth. And sometimes this takes years of turning again and again before I actually begin to live into the truth, to live into my true self. I suspect that will be the case for me.

Consider this an invitation to acknowledge the false self and step into your true self, one is fully known and deeply loved by God.

Signing off,

Gigi