I went to school at a small religious college that was chock full of various on-campus “ministries”. There was the Grease Monkey Ministry–a group of guys who would try to fix your car for free. There was the… I don’t know exactly what they were called but this group of fellows would run around to all of the dorms, up and down the halls, and pick up your garbage. There were other ministries but let me tell you about my favorite. 

It was developed by my younger sister during the year that she went to MNU with me. I remember when my sister told me that she was going to come to my college and I was so put out by it. I even told her something along the lines of, “Look, don’t expect me to hang out with you or anything, I have my own friends.” And it didn’t take long before I was the one following her around and snatching up all of her friends. Seriously, though, most of my college friends that I keep most in contact with, were Sarah’s friends, first. She’s so good at making friends. And she’s so good at taking care of people. And she’s so good at just being the cool girl in the room without even trying. 

At MNU, Sarah developed the Ugly Cake Ministry. She was the only one on the ministry team and it wasn’t widely known or anything but it existed nonetheless. The premise was this: if someone that you know is having a hard time, a rough day, a terrible semester, let us know and we’ll make them an Ugly Cake. Why an ugly cake? Why not a beautiful cake? Because, well, for a lot of reasons. First of all, it’s a lot easier to make an ugly cake than a beautiful one. But secondly, with an ugly cake you feel free to do whatever you want with it. Want to eat it? Great. Want to catapult it across a parking lot? Awesome. Want to grab fistfulls of it and get into a cake fight? Absolutely. And you don’t feel bad about ruining a beautiful cake. It’s an ugly cake. It has so many uses.

And this memory just reminds me of the gorgeous, sweet, heart that lives inside of my sister. She’s the life of the party and she has such a loving soul. The way that she communicates with her children will just blow your mind. The way that she loves and clings to her family through really rough times and really calm times, it’s inspiring. The way she takes care of other people. The way that she buckles down and just takes care of business when it needs to be taken care of. The way that she exercises gratitude as though it’s easy. I just love her and I wish that you could all know her. 

That’s all. I just wanted to tell you about my sister’s sweet heart. 

XOXO, Lib.