The Perfect Recipe

I SANK DOWN ON AN ASPHALT curb at the edge of the crowd—more than 500 contestants and their family and friends—at the 2017 World Food Championships, an international cooking competition. The day’s finalists for every category had been announced except for desserts, the one I’d made the mistake of entering. It was nearly 10 p.m. The adrenaline I’d been running on was gone. “It’s over,” I said to my husband, Jerry.

I didn’t belong here. I was an amateur home cook, not one of the real chefs competing all around me. I just wanted to be done with it. I’d seen God work in other people’s lives. I’d thought maybe this was my turn. I was wrong. There’d always been part of me that thought my dreams, my life, didn’t really matter to God. Now I knew.

I’d grown up in Mobile, Alabama, with an alcoholic mother who eventually abandoned us. She didn’t cook, so my father, a housepainter, did the best he could. Things were tough. Even my birthday, January 23, usually went uncelebrated. Maybe that’s why I hated the number 23. Bad