I'm a sweet girl. I'm kind, thrifty, courteous, and all those virtues in the Girl Scout handbook. If I had any faults it would be that besides being sweet, I love sweets. I've never met a brownie, pie, or cookie that I didn't like which is why if I had a talking scale it would say to me, "Please, just one person at a time!"
We didn't have cake very often when I was growing up. The cake stood for a special celebration...Birthdays, Christmas, Holidays, or special occasions. I had to share my birthday cake with my baby sister Beverly who has a birthday 5 days before me..As you might have guessed there wasn't much cake left to even blow out the candles. I was fourteen when she was born. I have noticed that if I'm mad, frustrated, or stressed I bake.
One vivid memory I have of cake was in Sunday School when I was about 12. The teacher asked for volunteers to help and of course, the boys were way too cool to volunteer. So she gave each girl a piece of cardboard with various items printed on them. Mine said, "Entertainment". She had us stand upfront with our signs and asked us if any of us knew what a budget was? She explained that what we were holding were items that our parents typically had to spend their money on every month.
Then to our great delight, she pulled a 2 layer cake out of the box and started dividing the cake into percentages we had assigned the various categories. Of course, Housing and Food got the biggest pieces. I remember her asking me how much of the budget should be spent on Entertainment.....of course, I said "All of it!".After laughing and telling me that many people do spend almost their entire budget on entertainment she gave me a small piece (about 10 percent).
By then the boys were demanding to participate so she handed out a few more parts of the budget. Finally, all the cake was gone but there was one more cardboard sign left. It said, "God". The boy who had that card looked very forlorn when the teacher handed him the empty plate with just a few crumbs left.
It left a lasting impression on me that we give God the crumbs....not the first piece or even the best piece but the leftover crumbs. It was the best tithing message I ever had and still remember to this day.
