Back to Baking

Whirlwind. That's the best way to describe this past week or so. I always seem to forget how busy this time of year is. It's not the chaos of Christmas time by any means, but we have three (now four!) birthdays to celebrate and Valentines Day. This year, we added a special baby shower for one of my friends. That means that I spent a ton of time searching for cake and cupcake decorations and baking lately. (Shout out to my mom who knew where to go for the best decorations!)Getting back into the kitchen for baking was such a beautiful experience after so much time away. Flour and powdered sugar falling onto my kitchen counter, glorious smells of muffins filling the air and a lot of stories intermingled with laughter is how I used to spend a lot of my weekends. It's funny that is no longer my reality. Funny being in that sad longing way for years past.If you ventured over here last week, you saw that my life drastically changed over the past couple of years. In the midst of that, I lost a lot of my heart and a lot of will to do the things I used to love. In fact, I offered to make the cake and cupcakes for the shower knowing that I could do it. I'd baked before. The reality is that I think I've baked maybe twice in the past 3 years. With mounting pain, instead of tossing it into some cupcakes, I tossed making cupcakes entirely.Stepping back into the kitchen, firing up the mixer and watching powdered sugar cascade onto the counter again, tinged my heart. I felt it in a place that I hadn't felt anything like it in awhile. I wasn't baking surrounded by the group of friends that I baked nearly every weekend with back in college. My beloved, Rick was there to pass me ingredients and lick the spatula though as he took over as my Assistant Baker.Baking allowed my soul the space to come alive again in such a small way. I guess it's one of those things that you just forget to do. You forget in the midst of pain that it's okay to do things just because. Just because they make you happy, just because they remind you of better days, just because it's a good start on the journey toward healing.What's one thing you haven't done in awhile that you love?