Three Times Wasn't a Charm

The Spritz cookie dough I made in October needed to make a baked appearance.  I had been in the kitchen all day and was determined to finish the day's projects.

I thawed the dough and gathered my supplies.

My favorite cookie press, the electric one that can spit out cookies faster than I can load the dumb thing, was dead.  Totally dead.  Now she's buried.

But, I had a backup old-fashioned hand crank cookie gun I bought at the thrift store for $3.50.  I pulled it out, thinking I'd beat Murphy's Law, but discovered why somebody donated it.  It was missing a piece!  A crucial piece that actually holds the pattern piece onto the bottom end.

I was ready to quit, but remembered I had actually ordered one off the internet a few years ago.  I had been receiving this email for "free" stuff for homeschooling.  I shoulda known better.  Nothing is free.  This was a deal, only $5 for the cookie press, along with a nastily thin cookie sheet and a puny wire cooling rack.  But, hey it was only $5.  The only problem was, shipping was $25, unless you spent $25. 

Can you believe what I did?  Yes, I ordered five of them.  I never order off the internet, I never fall for those sucker deals, but I ordered 5 for $25. After all, I have four daughters, or so I reasoned in an unseasonable moment of insanity. Then, in utter embarrassment, I just shoved them in a corner shelf in the garage.  There they stayed, until today. I thought it would save the day.

When something is too good to be true, it probably because it isn't good or it isn't true.  We really had issues with the press. It wasn't good.

My husband stepped in to be the hero and filled the cookie press.  He tried and laughed and tried and laughed and tried and laughed. We removed the parchment paper.  We chilled the dough some more.  We tried different wrist techniques.  We couldn't get the dough to come out in cute little tree shapes, just big splotches.

I know this would have been a good time to praise my hubby, but with all the It Has To Be A Perfect Christmas Passion welling up inside me, I wouldn't let him bake these cookies.  He put all the dough back in the fridge.

But, he couldn't waste the dough left inside of the cookie press,  so made just one cookie.  After all, the oven had been preheating for nearly an hour.

It was aMMMMMMMazing!  We love Gramma Alice's Spritz recipe!  Since they taste even better when shaped into a tree, we will try again tomorrow after we borrow the cookie press from Kelly-Across-the-Street.

If there is one thing I am learning over and over and over again - it isn't about the projects, it is about the patience the trials of the projects produce.

James 1:3 "Knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience."

After this holiday season, I should be going down in the Guiness Book of World Records for patience, because I feel like I have been swimming upstream to school both ways in the rain with two left feet.

But, in the future, I won't look back and marvel at all the goodies I baked, I will look back and marvel at the goodness the Lord worked in my heart by trying me over and over and over with trials.

Tomorrow, I plan on making cookies, but the Lord is planning on perfecting one of His beloved children.