Hello, dear friend. It's Laura, author of The Fralsningdor Chronicles.

Join me for a cup of tea at my writing nook in Wyoming!

🍰 The cake that kept its promise

A Devotional on Chocolate, Grace, and the Bittersweet Gift of Christian Marriage

My friend, it's time for our 5th Tuesday Devotional, and that is totally coming... but first, I need to tell you a story about a chocolate cake.

Not just any chocolate cake.

I need to tell you about the best chocolate cake I have ever had. Dense. Decadent. Gloriously bitter-sweet. With a cloak of tempered dark chocolate ganache and a crown of fresh raspberries.

Dramatic? Perhaps. Accurate? You betcha.

The first time I tasted it, I was a newlywed bride. The second time I tasted it, I was on a Comfort Inn futon. Let me explain.

🍫 The story

Three weeks ago, my husband and I traveled to Utah to visit family. And for a few days of our trip, we were near the place where we got married.

For years we’d been meaning to make a pilgrimage back to the Italian restaurant where we’d had our elopement dinner.

When we looked back on our wedding, we fondly remembered taking photos in the park with the wild geese, the beautifully simple courthouse nuptials, the tiny gathering of kids and parents, and that cake.

There was just one small problem.

We couldn’t remember what the restaurant was called!

So, naturally, we did what any reasonable couple does: we Googled “Italian restaurants near the South Salt Lake Justice Court” — much like we had eight years ago when we were planning our micro wedding on a shoestring and a prayer.

We found one that seemed almost right. Maybe? It was called Caffe Molise. Some of the menu items looked vaguely familiar, but the location was all wrong. Nothing matched the photographs fossilized in the dusty archives of my phone.

There was only one way to know for certain.

So, like the extroverted goblin I am, I dug out those blurry smartphone snapshots — the cake, the patio, the kids dumping spaghetti on their heads — and I sent them to the restaurant with an email.

I apologized for the bizarre request, then told them about our elopement dinner, the missing cake, and the forgotten restaurant. I told them that we would be in town that weekend and asked, pretty please, if someone could look at our wedding photos and tell me if I'd found the right restaurant.

Then we waited.

But not for long. Within the day, a reply landed in my inbox. We’d found them!

Caffe Molise had actually moved locations the very same year we got married — which explained why nothing online had looked quite right. And they were absolutely thrilled to accommodate our rather unusual request of baking an us entire dark chocolate cake for pickup on Friday evening.

There was, however, a snag.

Our hotel in Layton was an hour away from Caffe Molise.

Without a moment’s hesitation, my husband, Andrew, volunteered to drive the full hour there and the full hour back at eight o’clock at night after we had dinner with his parents. I stayed at the hotel with the kids, splashing around in the pool and trying to contain my anticipation.

By 10:30, he'd returned.

We prayed as a family and sent our kids to bed, then Andrew and I snuggled into our own bed (which was actually the pull-out futon — we'd opted for the room's subpar sleeping quarters for the sake of a little privacy). Netflix glowed softly on my tablet and soon our children were sleeping quietly in the connected room next door. Between us sat a brown bakery box containing one gorgeous dark chocolate cake.

We had no cake knife. No plates. Just plastic spoons I’d shamelessly begged from the man at the front desk.

We scooped up some cake, clicked our plastic spoons together like a toast, and fed each other a bite.

It was even better than I remembered.

✝️ The devotional

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32

The first time we tasted that cake, it was full of promise.

It represented a choice, a vow, and a future stretching out ahead of us like an open road. It was idealistic. Beautiful in the way that all beginnings are beautiful — lit with the hopeful glow of what could be.

Even as two people who had previously walked through divorce and knew all-too-well the ache of that particular grief, I think we were still a little naive. We knew the road ahead wouldn’t be easy. But we didn't know how it would be hard.

Eight years later, we know.

We know the unmistakable texture of conflict and repair, after God has mended our cracks with gold. We know the cost of dying to self on repeat (because, I swear my sin is a zombie, it just keeps popping out of the grave). We know what radical forgiveness looks like, not as a single dramatic moment, but as a quiet, daily practice — a hand extended again and again. We know how sin can tear a marriage apart, and how Christlike love can bind it back together.

“And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Colossians 3:14

That cake tasted sweeter the second time because we brought more to the table (or, uh... the Comfort Inn futon, as it were). This time, we weren't celebrating what could be. We were celebrating what is.

Not just eight years of memories, but eight years of grace. Eight years of God patiently, tenderly working the bitter things in us into something richer — the way a chocolatier works bitter cocoa into something that makes you close your eyes and exhale.

Christian marriage, I think, is a little like that dark chocolate cake.

It is never purely sweet. There is always the edge of bitterness — the friction of two sinners, the weight of old wounds, the places where we fall short of the people we promised to be. But that bitterness (tempered by the goodness of a holy God who's in the business of mending broken things), well... it certainly doesn’t ruin the sweetness.

It deepens it.

“Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." Romans 5:20

As my husband took his second bite, he looked up at me and said, “Thank you for emailing the restaurant.”

“Thank you for driving all that way to pick it up,” I replied, grinning as I popped a raspberry into my mouth.

He gave me a soft smile. “You’re worth it.”

Eight years in, on this side of salvation and grace and a hundred hard conversations and a thousand soft mercies — that is what the cake tastes like now.

Worth it.

💌 A question to sit with

Where in your marriage has something tasted sweeter because of what you’ve walked through together? What about your broken past makes the grace of Christ look even brighter?

If you’re in a season where the bitterness feels louder than the sweetness right now — I see you. That’s actually where most of my stories are born. Hold on. God is still working. And even if it doesn't come until eternity — peace and freedom are coming.

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6

Until next time, dear friend. May your marriage be seasoned with grace, and may all your cakes be beautifully bittersweet.

With love and plastic spoons,

💚 Laura

P.S. If you ever find yourself in Salt Lake City, Caffe Molise is absolutely worth the drive. Tell them the chocolate cake lady from Wyoming sent you.

P.P.S. I know eight years isn't a super long time to be married, but it is amazing what God can do in just a few years. Laura and Andrew from 2018 wouldn't even recognize us now. 🥹

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