If you're a girl, Thanksgiving is cookin' in the kitchen with your mom. It's an all day affair that actually begins the day before! My skills in the kitchen are terribly lacking...to the point where my Mom designated me as "clean up girl." No matter what I try, it seems like I'm on the brink of disaster! But I can do pumpkin pie. And I can make some awesome leaves for my pumpkin pie too. Thanks to my Momma. She taught me how. So I'm passing it on to you. It's ridiculously easy. I guess that's why I'm successful at it!
First make your pumpkin pie. Eric's grandmother used to make pumpkin pie from scratch. I mean the whole shabang! You know, where you actually bake your own pumpkin, scrape it, season it then make the crust and bake the pie. Whew! The first real danger for me would be trying to cut the thing in half to cook it! When I met Eric, I made a pumpkin pie for us and he thought it was the best pumpkin pie he'd ever eaten. "Please don't tell my grandmother. It takes her all day to make one pie. How do you make yours?" Libby's of course! (I even get the already seasoned can of pie mix.) Momma and I did like to make our own pie crust but for the leaves, the roll out dough is the best. That's the secret.
So roll out the pie crust. Get a large and small leaf shaped cookie cutter and cut as many as you can out of one pie crust. To make the leaves look sorta "real," draw veins on the leaves.
Next roll up ten or so balls of foil - golf ball sized. Lay the leaves over the balls of foil. This way they come out looking wavy and not flat like you pressed them and pulled them out of a book. Now cook them until they're golden brown.
You see, it's not about the taste with the leaves - it's about the prettiness! After that, be sure to let them cool completely or they'll break into pieces when you try to pull them off the foil balls. Heck, mine break into pieces anyway 'cause that's how things go in my kitchen when I cook! Then arrange them on your pie. That's it! It makes for a fancy pumpkin pie and it's really easy to do!
My Momma - She died last March of pancreatic cancer. Last year I couldn't stand to be in the kitchen. Every time I'd go in there tears would stream down my face. You see, we lived with her. It's her kitchen that I cook in. She's everywhere and she's nowhere. But today, I'm feeling better about it. It does take time for sure. Last week I met with Dianna Bellow for a coffee date one cold afternoon. Dianna and I talked about Mom and the last year and about heaven. She said that "it's seemless to go to heaven. And there is just a veil between heaven and earth. Such a thin veil that a breath can pass through it." I don't know about you, but her words impacted me so much. My eyes brimmed with tears. To be so close to my Savior and my Momma. What a comfort and joy. Happy Thanksgiving everybody.
The people of India know nothing of this kind of Love. They have no source for this kind of peace. This morning I was sitting and thinking of them and realized that they will spend their entire lives trying to please a god that doesn't even exist. The god they have created is a fickle God and will determine their future on a whim. They spend each day trying to be good enough for the scale to tip in their favor hoping that they will be granted eternity in heaven.
My God is not fickle. He doesn't rule by emotion or on a whim. He doesn't keep score. His love for me is boundless, limitless and has no breaking point. How do you live without that kind of love and hope? Really. How do you live without a source of peace? Their gods have never offered hope or love and have never given them even a moment of peace. By the time you're 44 don't you just give up? There's no way the scale would ever tip in my favor. Hopelessness would set in. I got the incredible gift of being taken by a native Indian deep into his country. He took me across Mother India by car, taxi, train and plane. I've been in small towns and great cities. I've been in villages and in the jungle. And what impressed me the most was the blank look on the people's faces.
They are faces of lives that are hard and worn down. They are faces that dreamed of a better future but now know it doesn't exist. Not in Hinduism anyway. These children still have hope in their eyes. Their quiet ways entranced me and moved my heart to a deep longing for them to have Hope, and to know Love and to know Peace. Pray for India. Pray for her people to know the love of God. Pray for her children that they might not be trapped in hopelessness but to live free in Christ - tucked in the hallow of his hand.
