It began with the sugar cookies we made a few weeks ago.

Fall is prime baking season at our house, time to pull out our favorite recipes, now dotted with batter and splattered with sugar and flour, vanilla, and spice.

Of course, baking at our house always involves one Master Baker and three assistants, who all want to crack the eggs.

For years, I’ve declined, confining my helpers to stirring and pouring in the already measured flour.  Finally, though, I relented when we crowded around the table to make sugar cookies.  Thus I began the risky job of teaching children how to crack eggs into a bowl of ingredients without also dumping in egg shells.

One daughter daintily tapped the egg on the table, barely making the tiniest crack in the shell.  Another practically slammed her egg down on the side of the bowl.  My preschooler tried to mimic the other girls, tapping and then slamming.

Eventually, I exhaled.  I had survived the initial egg cracking and only had to dip my hand in to snatch a few shells from the batter.

Since then, we’ve baked another batch of sugar cookies, some cinnamon bread, ginger spice cookies, and a pumpkin pie and every time there is improvement and growing confidence.

I may never crack another egg open again.

As a mom, it’s so difficult at times to teach and let go, instruct and then take my hands off and let my daughters try, maybe fail, maybe succeed, but always try and try again.

But if I’m always the one cracking the eggs into the bowl, how will they ever learn?

Spiritual growth happens the same way.  God may teach us truths from His Word, but eventually we have to live them out and apply them in the dailyness of life.

“Trust Him” we read and so we must eventually trust.  “Rest in Him” we learn and so eventually we must ease our white-knuckled grip off the steering wheel and relax under His guidance.

Anything else isn’t spiritual growth at all; it’s stunted dependence and shallow faith, quickly dried up into cracked and dusty death at the slightest drought.

So, this week I’m thinking about the many ways I need to teach and let go and I’ll be meditating on a verse that reminds me how I myself am growing, little by little, sometimes via mistakes and occasionally in triumph.  But always God is patient when He has to pull out the eggshells when I’ve made a mess of things.  And gently He allows me to try again.

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
(2 Peter 3:18 NIV)

You can check out some of my recipes here!  Or, you can visit the links below for some of my favorite fall baking:

• Banana Muffins
• Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread
• Big Soft Ginger Cookies
• Apple Washington
• Soft Sugar Cookies
• Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2012 Heather King