German Chocolate Cupcakes

I made and decorated four-dozen cupcakes yesterday. Homemade butter cream icing, fresh strawberries, and slivered almonds covered a delectable mound of German-chocolate cake. Hallie, my five-year-old niece, sat next to me as I frosted the cupcakes, and she carefully placed three or four strawberry pieces on top when I finished. We sat there for an hour and she talked about her imaginary poodle and how her teacher had been sick last week. I had to be careful to avoid the chunks of butter in my homemade frosting (Martha Stewart’s recipes never turn out like they should). But it was one of the better moments of my weekend.
We were at a benefit dinner my sisters were throwing. Susanne, Hallie’s mom, and Noelle, who is almost seventeen, are leading a mission’s trip to Haiti this summer. Last night the two directors of the orphanage spoke, and the ten students, who are planning on traveling this summer, prepared and served dinner to about forty people. I was on desert duty, and I was glad to be in Craig’s office icing cupcakes with Hallie and away from all the people, people that seemed now so different from myself. Different and yet painfully familiar.
I’ve traveled to Africa twice, once in high school and then again a year and a half ago. Both times, I felt “led” by God. I had images of starving children, huts, elephants, and me, a brave white girl, helping out the unfortunate, serving the needy, doing God’s “will”. And both times many of those images were confirmed. When I was in Uganda, I was confronted with child after child coming up to me on the streets in Kampala, usually clutching a younger infant to his or her side, looking up at me with dark eyes and asking for food and for money. One day I met a group of three children, the oldest a 12 year old girl, clearly pregnant and very alone. And elephants? Absolutely. When I was in Botswana elephants were everywhere—at gas stations, at our campsite, in people’s backyards. But the one image that was never confirmed was me because while I did hold orphans I was not brave and I don’t know if I helped anyone. I was a skinny, privileged, white girl who was facing a reality that I still don’t know how to handle. I cried a lot when I was in Uganda. I walked away from my belief in a just God. Eventually I walked away from Christianity altogether.
And so last night, listening to these young, idealistic, high schoolers talk about how much they loved God and how excited they were to serve the poorest of the poor, I wanted to stand up and tell all of them how wrong they were. How much God didn’t care. I wanted my two sisters, two women that I love more than anything, to join me in my understanding and in my rejection of what I’ve been taught—I didn’t want to feel alone.
But then I saw my mom and my dad. I saw them watching my little sister with tears in their eyes. And I thought about how proud they were of us. I listened to the ten kids explain the reason why they were going, and it all tied back to my little sister; she had organized everything, encouraged her friends to get involved, and she’s only sixteen. I watched her, and I was reminded of her beautiful heart—I knew she wanted to love people, to help people, to erase some of the inequality that this world seems to run on. And I was proud too. Susanne and Noelle are in different place than me in some areas, but in others I feel as if we move as one. And I am honored that my sisters care so much about me and so much about people—we may not believe in the same religious paradigm, but there are no other women that I feel as intimately connected to. And so I withheld my urge to deconstruct God, to explain what seeing starving kids did to me, and I just stood and watched as a proud sister.