Love is like a Cake!

Thursday, February 9, 2012 | GABAY at 11:36 PM |

It’s valentine again and I always wonder why people make a big fuss of it!

Don’t get me wrong please… I am a bona fide hopeless romantic to the core. After saying my good-bye to Nancy Drew mysteries, I slowly progressed to Mills & Boons and anchored on Grace Livingstone Hill romance novels. But I fell in love with the “Mistress of Mellyn” by Victoria Holt.

I also cry when I listen to love songs and wondered what my love story will be. I was so terrified to reach 17 because of the song written by Janis Ian:

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth..

I was not a beauty queen, I was even “vertically challenged” and boys my age don’t see any charm in me to be personally involved. But I know there is a time for everything, I just have to patiently wait.

I vividly remember my first valentine day in a relationship. I wrote a simple love poem, cut letters from magazines, decorated each word with colorful threads, pasted it on a colorful paper and presented my work of love to him. He replied without blinking an eyelash, “I don’t believe in Valentine’s Day!” My heart crashed at that very moment for my work was not appreciated.  But he softly explained, “My love for you is not celebrated in just one special day, because I believe every day should be Valentine’s Day!” Guess what! We never did celebrate Valentines but we had been married for nearly 28 years now.  

What lessons have we learned through the years?

At the beginning, love relationship is like a cake covered with a beautiful and colorful icing. So nice to behold and so tempting to try! Children fight just to have a sweet flower icing. We always enjoy the sweet things in life and are often deceived that a love relationship is just filled with the “sweetums” of chocolates and roses and the sweet nothings.

But we all know that a cake, like a love relationship, is more than the icing, more than the superficial. What is the relationship really made of? Is it sponge (soft) or a pudding (hard)? Is it chocolate (bitter)? Is it lemon (sour)? Is it sweet or bland? Or is it a combination of all? A delicious cake is made up of different ingredients with various amounts and various tastes, but when combined together and is passed through the fire, create a delectable, sumptuous and mouth watering dessert.

So is with the love relationship! It is a combination of trust, respect, kindness, goodness, humility, mercy and forgiveness and all the other fruits which are thickened by the genuine love of the Bread of Life.

I just love fruitcakes! Not only because it is filled with dried fruits but because time does not take its toll on it. The older the fruitcake, the sweeter and the better it is. A love relationship should be like a fruitcake, proven and tested through time.

I may not celebrate valentines as a romantic encounter, but based on the stories, I have learned that St. Valentine was martyred on February 14, 269 AD for refusing to give up Christianity. That is genuine love which deserves great respect!

As we celebrate this love month, let that genuine love grow deeper and overflow from our hearts, not only this month but every day of every year.