Foreign Language: Piece of Cake!

I love to decorate cakes!  What completes a birthday party better than a great cake, right?  When the kids were younger, I always decorated cakes for their birthdays.  They could choose the theme and then I'd go crazy (and spend hours) decorating their cake.  It was fun and I learned how to do all kinds of great things with icing!  I made a car cake, a computer cake, a Power Rangers cake, a Spiderman, superhero, plane, train, soccer etc, etc.  Notice the boy theme.  But, I also learned to make roses and daisies and swirls and curls and I'd decorate cakes for girls and ladies as well.

When we lived in Africa, a very sweet young lady named Ruta worked for me several days a week.  She was so quiet and sweet and I loved her dearly.  She had seen many of the cakes I'd decorated and one day she asked if I'd make a birthday cake for her son.  Oh, I was flattered!  I was so happy to get to do something like that to help her throw a party for her little boy.  I agreed immediately!  I planned to have the cake baked and decorated on the following Friday so that she could bring it home for the weekend.

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I mixed up the batter from scratch and baked it in two round pans to make a layered cake.  I covered the cooled cake in rich home-made blue icing and carefully decorated with contrasting colors.  I had studied the tribal language that Ruta and her family spoke and I thought what a special treat it would be to write "Happy Birthday" in her language.  Now, Ruta's mother tongue is not a common language, not many foreigners at all speak it, and it is written in the Ge'ez alphabet, a completely different script.  But I, Jana Kelley, knew that language and could write that script.  Yes, I have the distinct feeling that I was a bit prideful as I wrote those words in creamy white icing on that blue layered cake.  It looked wonderful!  I prepared a box for the cake and carefully packed it so that Ruta could bring it home with her.  I was so happy with the result, knowing Ruta would be so pleased, and surprised too!

And surprised she was.

"Wow," she said, "did you write that?"

"Yes," I smiled, "I did."  Yes!  This was great!  Ruta thanked me and brought the cake home, amazed that I knew how to write a greeting in her language.  We had a relaxing weekend and it was not until Saturday night, as I lay in bed, that it struck me...

My eyes flew open and I gasped loudly...

OH NO!  I'd written "Merry Christmas" on the cake!

Oh my word!  That's what I got for being so prideful about being able to speak and write in her language!  On Monday, Ruta returned to work.

"Ruta!" I exclaimed, "I wrote 'Merry Christmas' on your son's birthday cake!"

"Yes," she replied.

"I am so sorry!"

"That's ok!  It was really nice."

Ruta was so sweet and never made fun of me.  But I've always wondered what that party was like.  All those people gathering around the "Merry Christmas" birthday cake, snickering at that silly foreign lady who decorated it!  And somehow, when I think of that story, I am reminded of Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goes before destruction a haughty spirit before the fall"!