“We want to make you a birthday cake, Mom, from scratch!” my sisters and I announced. My sweet mother agreed and turned over her kitchen to her daughters, whose curious minds more than made up for their inexperience in the kitchen.

We found a recipe for a two-layer yellow cake and began to follow it, well, sort of, until we pulled out the box of baking soda and the tin of baking powder. “They both will make the cake rise,” my more scientifically inclined sister pointed out.

We decided to add both in more than good measure to the batter. We did not want the cake to suffer from fallen-cake syndrome. We test-tasted the batter. It tasted fine to us, and we carefully slid the two cake pans into the oven.

Next the frosting—sugar, milk and vanilla. We pulled out the container of white sugar and the bag of powdered sugar. They’re sugar, so we dumped both into the frosting bowl, adding milk and sugar, milk and sugar, milk and sugar until we achieved our desired consistency.

The frosting, however, lacked color. Out came the food coloring. Blue—Mom’s favorite color. Two drops turned the frosting into a lovely pale blue. Not content with that, we added two more drops, then two more, then two more. The frosting turned a deeper shade of blue with each added drop, until the bottle was empty.

Frosting done. It was time to pull out the cake from the oven. Imagine our delight when those single layers magically had turned into two, and we could now present our mom with a four-layer birthday cake—except we only had enough frosting for a two-layer cake. No problem, just more splashes of milk, maybe more sugar and we were good.

Our mother ooo-ed and ahh-ed as we placed the cake in front of her as we cut into the big, beautiful, blue birthday cake—baked around the edges, but raw in the center. Our mother gamely took a small bite of the cake as we shouted, “It’s raw. Don’t eat it.” Not even our own mother could eat a piece of what was now a big, blue, gloppy birthday cake. Seems we got carried away with the add-ons.

There are times when life resembles a gloppy blue inedible birthday cake.

For me, it’s add-ons to prayers. I’ve read Philippians 4:6. I’ve memorized Philippians 4:6. I know Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Because I can’t quite shake the anxiety, I add to my requests the specifics I expect from him. When others share their prayer requests, I listen, fully intending to pray for them, but not before I add my fix-it to their situations.

It's a grace that God doesn’t need our add-ons to answer us. It’s grace, because he already knows what we need to keep our lives from becoming a gloppy mess.

On the Gospel Coalition site, Doug O’Donnell writes in his online commentary on Matthew 6:19-34: “The three reasons given not to be anxious are that anxiety is unproductive (“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” 6:27), unnecessary (“look at the lilies, behold the birds!—how God cares for them” 6:26), and unworthy (“life is more than food, and the body more than clothing,” 6:25). Why worry about what God will surely provide? The concerned Christian focuses first and foremost on spreading the reign of Christ on earth.”

It’s a grace because God doesn’t want anxious followers who feel as if everything depends on them when, in fact, nothing does. It’s a grace—and a relief—that we have everything we need and more in Jesus. As the hymn “Like a River Glorious” reminds us:

We may trust him fully
all for us to do;
they who trust him wholly
find him wholly true.
Stayed upon Jehovah,
hearts are fully blest,
finding, as he promised,
perfect peace and rest.

Nothing added, nothing more needed.