A young bride unwrapped the gift as she moved into their first home. It was not much, just a box set of tin cookie cutters. It was the heart of the Depression, so even the smallest of gifts seemed like a luxury. Baking cookies for the first time…what shape would she use for this first of many firsts in her marriage? The star seemed too Christmas-like for such a warm summer day and she certainly wanted to wait to use the heart for Valentines Day so it would be special. Her hand traveled over the set and finally paused as it came to a perfect circle - that would be just right. It reminded her of the ring her husband placed on her finger just last week. With that decided, she opened the notebook of recipes her grandmother had given her - the one that held all the favorites of the generations, and she got to work. Grandma’s sugar cookies would melt in her husband’s mouth that very evening.
Flour soon covered the table and the house grew too warm from the fire in the cook stove. This would cause the new bride to decide that baking in the summer heat would need done early in the morning before the sun came up. As she picked up the cookie cutter for the first time, the moisture on her hands made it slip and it dropped to the floor and rolled under the table. She cried out in frustration at herself, fearing that she had already ruined one of her wedding gifts. She crawled on the floor until she found the circle and ran her fingers all around the surface to see if it was still perfectly round. There was one slight dent on the side, but it was not very noticeable. Relieved, she stood and wiped it clean and began cutting out cookie after cookie. As the years passed and their family grew, many a child baked their first cookie as they heard the story of the wayward circle. Having an imperfection didn’t take away the usefulness of the cutter, she would tell each of them, it would actually make it even more special. Each of us are dented in some way, and God uses our dents to help us be the individuals that he created us to be.
Years later, the box of cookie cutters was passed on to another in the family - another new bride. She too knew the story and felt honored to bake circle-shaped cookies for her family as it grew. After a day of baking, the cutter was left out on the counter waiting to be washed. A child reached for a glass in the cupboard above and it slipped - crashing to the counter below. He felt heartsick, what he held in his hand was no longer a circle at all. The tiny imperfection was now a deep gash on one edge. The first instinct of the child was to hide the cookie cutter, through eyes of fear and shame, the dent made the cutter look ugly and misshapen. Suddenly the mother appeared in the doorway, having heard the commotion. As she looked down into the small hand, she felt a bit of loss and grief. She was sad and blamed herself for not being more careful with what had been given her. She should have stopped using the cookie cutters long ago and put them away on a shelf where they could be safe. However, in the moment, it was more important to find something positive to say; it was just an accident after all. As she gained new perspective by holding the cutter up, she smiled. She held it up in front of her child’s eyes and said, “Look.” Together they dried their tears as they noticed that the once perfect circle now looked more like a heart. It wasn’t exactly perfect, but that big dent had transformed the piece of tin. With eyes of love, the dent just made it more lovable and have much more character. It was another teachable moment for the mother and she didn’t waste it. See, even when things crash down on us, God can use those trials to shape us if we will just let Him.
More years passed and the cookie cutter traveled many miles and lived in different houses. Some, who were the recipients of the funny little heart, didn’t see much value in using it. Some never even took it out of the box. After enough moves and the box being thrown around too much, the heart shape wasn’t quite so obvious. The cutter became a bit more damaged and there didn’t seem to be very many folk that wanted to make cookies with shapes they couldn’t recognize. Even then, it didn’t seem quite right to throw it away, so it just moved from kitchen to kitchen with castoffs from other generations.
A weary mother opened more boxes as her four children played in their new yard. Her life has not been easy and grief has become her only faithful companion. She often reminds herself that generations ago, the women in her family had much less, and she should be thankful for what these few boxes hold. She pulls the tape from the last package and begins finding a place for everything. Her hand reaches in for the last item and emerges with what appears to be a crumpled piece of newspaper. Inside she finds a misshapen piece of metal that resembles what was once a cookie cutter. She remembers seeing something similar in an antique store years ago. The young woman doesn’t have any cookie cutters, but she does have an old recipe book. The story went that a grandmother had written down all her favorite recipes and put them in this notebook. It was given to the first granddaughter to get married and had been passed down for generations. Now it was the only known piece of her family left and she treasured it. It was so fragile now, pages yellowed and falling out easily. She rarely opened the notebook anymore, fearing what would happen to it. She had already found a special place for it, high on a kitchen shelf. She wondered if this poor little cookie cutter had lived a similar hard life - it had certainly seen better days. She felt privileged to have it, no matter its shape or where it had come from.
Later that day the children poured into the kitchen. Their cheeks rosy from running in the yard didn’t hide the sadness in their eyes. Their mother wanted so much for this house, this yard to be different. What could she do to make a fresh start, a new memory for them? Cookies! Baking cookies would be fun and would fill the house with new smells and memories. Why not let the past show us a way to a new future, she thought, and with that, she reached for the old notebook of recipes. She carefully thumbed through the pages until she found what she was looking for. She actually had all the ingredients for the sugar cookie recipe, but what would she use for cutting shapes? Her face brightened as she pulled the messy piece of tin from the drawer. With a few taps of a hammer and a bit more bending - if the cookie cutter could take just a bit more…perhaps it could work.
Soon the kitchen was filled with laughter and flour was everywhere. The mother bent to pull another sheet of warm cookies from the oven while the children spread thick frosting over the cooled ones. The shape resembled a flower with five funny petals. The mother explained as she bent the metal, “each of us is a petal, with our own shape.” “God put us together, to form this flower called a family. Others might look at our flower and just see something bent and broken, but because we let Him constantly tend to us and feed us, He can use us to make something beautiful.”
Moral of the story:
Sometimes we get bent. We get hurt emotionally, we experience loss and grief, we are faced with chronic or life threatening illness and we never want to come out of our drawer again. We can approach our “dents” with different attitudes. We can feel defeated and give up, not allowing God to use whatever shape we‘re in. We can also grieve and then say, “Okay God, now what? “ We are people, with all our flaws and dents and we are each loved by a God that never throws us away.
Originally written, April 2006
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