Poetry, Banana Bread, and Life

Have you ever looked at recipe and thought, "How will this work out?"
There are unknowns and unseens
Odd combinations and delicious dreams
Even when you think you know, you doubt.

We don't trust because we're futile
Us and our plans
You'll find stones, weights and burdens clenched in our hands
We don't trust the recipe because of our overflowing "Failure" file.

Our lives are a chopping board
Filled with ingredients that don't make sense
There's eggs, coconut oil, and cinnamon in the dents
We're unsure what they'll make, yet we try to hoard.

We pretend that our recipes are something that we know
When in fact we're as uncertain
About the outcome as we are about the pan
It's only after the oven that He'll show

Just exactly how He uses vanilla bean and salt
Milk, bananas and flour
To take what we have made sour
And sweeten it with the One without fault.

Throughout all of my baking, I've learned simply this:
That He puts us through breakings and beatings
Restings and kneadings
That we might bake--rise and be His.

We're broken pieces of bread
Ingredients of all sorts
He does the choosing, we're His cohorts
Ours is the job to trust that with our lives, others will be fed.

Perhaps your life looks a little like this: 

How will things come together? Will I turn out the way I want to be? Will my plans work? What about this? And that really important thing that I'm planning on, what about that? Sometimes our "ingredients" aren't even as organized as that photo...sometimes we're scattered and even unsure that we have any ingredients. 

But as the mixing process starts, as eggs are broken and things get messy, God knows what He's doing.

He knows that, once you're out of the oven, you'll look something like this:

(Don't get too excited, I know it looks amazing, but I'm not being literal...) The idea is that He puts us and all our craziness into a bowl, mixes us together, and adds a lot of Christ's love and out comes the result: a bread, a dish, a meal, made to glorify Him. Because on our own, as individual ingredients, we don't make much sense. We're okay, but together, we're much better. That only comes through the process of breaking and bonding--and then the oven. Lots of us fear the oven, and for good reason, but it's truly beautiful what comes out of it.

I can't take a recipe and post it on here without drawing some sort of practical conclusion or wisdom from it and today, while making this banana bread, I realized, "Eh, if I was one of these bananas I'd be wondering, "Why are you mashing me up and mixing me with that dude the egg?" and yet I, the baker, know what it's for. I can see the end result, and I see deliciousness. God sees that as well. We might not be able to understand at this moment why things are the way they are, but He has a purpose for it, and He sees deliciousness at the end.


BANANA BREAD

2/3 cup Coconut flour
6 eggs (that's right, 6 eggs, and if they're farm fresh that's even better)
3 medium bananas, ripe and mashed
4 tablespoons coconut oil or butter, melted
1/3 cup milk (or coconut milk for dairy free)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla extract
Dash of sea salt

DIRECTIONS

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 1 pound loaf pan with parchment paper or grease with coconut oil or butter.
• Mash bananas with a fork.
• Combine all wet ingredients, except for coconut oil and flour, blending until thoroughly mixed.
• Sift in coconut flour, baking soda and spices and blend, scraping down sides several times.
• Add in melted coconut oil and mix one last time.
• Pour batter into the greased loaf pan and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.
• Allow bread to set and cool slightly before taking out of the pan. 
• Slice and slather with your choice of butter, peanut butter, coconut oil, almond butter, blueberry jam, really the possibilities are endless!