I helped my mom make reindeer cookies this week. My kids and I make them every year this time, and my mom wanted to have some for a party she was hosting. They are cute and easy to make. Sort of easy. I’m not a baker or cook. These cookies are more like a craft than anything else, so I’m good at making them.

Here’s how:

You take sugar cookie dough, homemade or slice and bake (I go for the slice and bake myself. Not a baker, remember?) Roll it out, and use a cookie cutter to cut three inch circles into the dough, or just carefully slice the Pillsbury dough log into circles. Place your circles on a greased cookie pan and pinch the side in a little. The circles now look a little like a flat peanut. Place two chocolate chips on the top half of the peanut shape and one red M&M on the bottom half. Now for the challenging part. Take large pretzel knots and break them to make antlers for the, um, antlers. The picture shows how it should look after you break it apart. This is not as easy as it looks. Once you get the pretzels broken properly, two per cookie, then you place them on the cookie where antlers would go. Bake in a 350 degree oven for ten minutes or so and cool before trying to transfer them. These cookies are super cute and fun to make with kids.

I will warn you that you will mess up more pretzels than you get right. Mostly we just usually eat the mistakes, or save them to crunch up and dip in chocolate. As my mom and I tried again and again to break pretzels into antlers, the mistake pile grew much larger than the success pile. We laughed about that.

I laughed because I know in my own life that my mistake pile is much larger than my success pile. Sometimes getting anything right seems so hard. Even things that seem to come much easier to everyone else. I’m good at a few things, but I really stink at a lot of others. I just pray that the things that I am good at are the things that really matter.

As I said, I really can’t cook, but what I hope I am good at is feeding my kids Godly wisdom. I am a horrible procrastinator, but I hope to be Johnny-on-the-spot when a friend is in need. I am quite disorganized, but I want my relationship with God to take top priority in my life.

As a Christ follower, I want to spend my life chasing after him. It’s easy to get derailed with all the distractions the world has to offer us. The world’s view of success is just so backwards, and yet if we are not careful we will find ourselves chasing after it. We judge our success by the clothes on our backs, or the cars we drive. Is our house big enough, or our jobs important enough? Are we keeping up with the Joneses?

I want to be successful at the things in life that are important. I want to have the wisdom to know which things are important. My mistake pile will probably always be bigger than my success pile, but I hope that I succeed in the things that truly matter.