Chopping Onions for Jesus
Chopping Onions for Jesus
Yes, you read the title correctly—I am writing about cutting onions, because sometimes, Jesus asks you to cut onions… for Him. Sometimes, He has been prepping you for mundane tasks, such as this, for decades.
When in El Salvador on this year’s mission trip, we were required to each spend an hour in the morning helping to prep in the kitchen. I chose to take the first shift since I am an early morning riser. I was greeted with a cutting board, a dull kitchen knife, a pile of vegetables, and a lot of memories.
Backtrack to about 2016 (give or take). I was leading a small group of ladies. Because of our busy schedules, we began holding our meetings during dinner. All of us were trying to eat healthier, so we planned the meals in that direction. Almost every week, I was assigned to make a salad for the meal. I hated it. I hated chopping vegetables. I hated buying fresh vegetables because they always went to waste before I could use them. (My family refused to eat vegetables!) It was just a waste, in my opinion. But every week came and went, and I chopped vegetables for salads for my small group. I bought contraptions to make it easier; I bought pre-cut lettuce and all of the shortcuts I could find to make it less painful. But those contraptions never worked for long, and I always ended up back at a cutting board and a knife, cutting veggies.
Fast forward to the present: my husband started having health issues a few years ago. What are some of the recommendations from the doctor? Start eating salads. It took a gradual introduction, but eventually he accepted the change and learned to like salads for lunch. As a result, I find myself cutting vegetables every week. I have been doing it for a few years now. What started as a drudgery has turned into a pleasant routine where I can pray or listen to Christian music and dance around the kitchen while cutting vegetables for salads, out of love for my husband and for my own health.
"In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone." 2Pet. 1:5-7
Patient endurance, turning to brotherly affection. Here I was in El Salvador, cutting up vegetables. Joyfully. Enjoyably. Something I despised and found wasteful now has been turned into praise. I enjoyed it so much that I volunteered to prep a second day when a member of the team got sick on her scheduled day to prep.
Further, I was asked to chop onions. If you have ever cut onions, you know why I didn’t want to do it. The strong smell makes your eyes water! Chopping onions was yet another familiar pain from the past. My oldest son detests onions. No matter how I tried to disguise the onions, he could always find them. I could chop them tiny, and he would sit and study each and every bite to pick out microscopic pieces of onions. Onions, unfortunately, were about the only vegetable that my husband would eat in those early years of marriage. So, you see my dilemma. Chopping onions in El Salvador was a familiar conundrum from my past.
A third, more subtle preparation from the past came next – fine chopping. As my breakfast prep partner and I cut onions, the Spanish-speaking “sous chef” kept saying, “Más pequeño” (which means “smaller”). We chopped and chopped and chopped, over and over the same pieces. I was at complete peace because of my learned appreciation for cutting vegetables and chopping onions. He was not. I remembered what I saw him experiencing—the wrestling between perfectionism and excellence.
Flashback to about 2017 or 2018. I was leading a team to decorate for a leader’s appreciation dinner. We were recreating a look for the room that we had experienced at a ladies’ conference earlier that year. I was so grateful because God sent me to just the right places to find all the supplies I needed. The room came together beautifully, “perfect” one might say. But there was one flaw: the men who hung the string lights up were not very detailed. It was a challenging task because they needed a large ladder. They had a ton of stuff to do, so I had grace for them when the lights weren’t impeccably spaced. I looked at it as giving the space rustic charm and a little character, since everything else was “perfect.”
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Phil. 4:8
But there was a woman on staff who couldn’t overlook the flaw. She asked them to fix it—a daunting task that would have impacted the rest of their time. They both refused. Then she turned to me and asked me to do it... repeatedly.
This was one of the first times ever in my life that I had the nerve to stand up to someone who struggled with perfectionism. I said through choked-back tears, “I’m not giving in to perfectionism anymore. If you want the lights adjusted, you are going to have to pull the ladder out and do it yourself.” It was exceedingly difficult for me to talk back to a superior, but I couldn’t give in to someone’s personal preferences any longer. If I did that for every person on the staff at that job, I would have spent all day, everyday catering to the personal preferences of human beings. I was there to serve Jesus. And I felt like He was already pleased with our decoration of the space.
I have a painting in my office. The issues behind the painting are pride, humility, and perfectionism. In the painting, Jesus’s face is lopsided; His eyes are not even; the beams of light are not straight; the shadows of the trees are not at the right angles. I worked on it for months. I corrected Jesus’s face tons of times. Every time I returned to the painting, His face was crooked again. Finally, after my last correction, God whispered to my heart to sign the painting. It was done. I was overjoyed to finally be done. Guess what? His face is still crooked. Jesus has taught me through the painting that He judges what is “excellent,” not my desire to have things perfect by human standards.
So, this is what I was feeling as I chopped onions in El Salvador. Peace. Why? Because no one was “expecting” the onions to be chopped microscopically due to personal preference. They were looking for a consistent product that would be pleasing to all the people who would eat it. They were serving food, not to make themselves happy, but to serve the missions team that was serving the Lord. This was a loving service of chopping onions “más pequeño.” If I hadn’t experienced all of the pain of annoyance from chopping vegetables for salads and the leftover waste, if I hadn’t experienced the gradual growth of loving service to my husband’s health needs, if I hadn’t wrestled with chopping onions for my son, if I hadn’t confronted the pain of perfectionism and stood up for my own personal boundaries, and wrestled with the difference between excellence and perfectionism in the painting, I never would have found the peace in chopping onions for Jesus in El Salvador.
Yes, you read the title correctly—I am writing about cutting onions, because sometimes, Jesus asks you to cut onions… for Him. Sometimes, He has been prepping you for mundane tasks, such as this, for decades.
When in El Salvador on this year’s mission trip, we were required to each spend an hour in the morning helping to prep in the kitchen. I chose to take the first shift since I am an early morning riser. I was greeted with a cutting board, a dull kitchen knife, a pile of vegetables, and a lot of memories.
Backtrack to about 2016 (give or take). I was leading a small group of ladies. Because of our busy schedules, we began holding our meetings during dinner. All of us were trying to eat healthier, so we planned the meals in that direction. Almost every week, I was assigned to make a salad for the meal. I hated it. I hated chopping vegetables. I hated buying fresh vegetables because they always went to waste before I could use them. (My family refused to eat vegetables!) It was just a waste, in my opinion. But every week came and went, and I chopped vegetables for salads for my small group. I bought contraptions to make it easier; I bought pre-cut lettuce and all of the shortcuts I could find to make it less painful. But those contraptions never worked for long, and I always ended up back at a cutting board and a knife, cutting veggies.
Fast forward to the present: my husband started having health issues a few years ago. What are some of the recommendations from the doctor? Start eating salads. It took a gradual introduction, but eventually he accepted the change and learned to like salads for lunch. As a result, I find myself cutting vegetables every week. I have been doing it for a few years now. What started as a drudgery has turned into a pleasant routine where I can pray or listen to Christian music and dance around the kitchen while cutting vegetables for salads, out of love for my husband and for my own health.
"In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone." 2Pet. 1:5-7
Patient endurance, turning to brotherly affection. Here I was in El Salvador, cutting up vegetables. Joyfully. Enjoyably. Something I despised and found wasteful now has been turned into praise. I enjoyed it so much that I volunteered to prep a second day when a member of the team got sick on her scheduled day to prep.
Further, I was asked to chop onions. If you have ever cut onions, you know why I didn’t want to do it. The strong smell makes your eyes water! Chopping onions was yet another familiar pain from the past. My oldest son detests onions. No matter how I tried to disguise the onions, he could always find them. I could chop them tiny, and he would sit and study each and every bite to pick out microscopic pieces of onions. Onions, unfortunately, were about the only vegetable that my husband would eat in those early years of marriage. So, you see my dilemma. Chopping onions in El Salvador was a familiar conundrum from my past.
A third, more subtle preparation from the past came next – fine chopping. As my breakfast prep partner and I cut onions, the Spanish-speaking “sous chef” kept saying, “Más pequeño” (which means “smaller”). We chopped and chopped and chopped, over and over the same pieces. I was at complete peace because of my learned appreciation for cutting vegetables and chopping onions. He was not. I remembered what I saw him experiencing—the wrestling between perfectionism and excellence.
Flashback to about 2017 or 2018. I was leading a team to decorate for a leader’s appreciation dinner. We were recreating a look for the room that we had experienced at a ladies’ conference earlier that year. I was so grateful because God sent me to just the right places to find all the supplies I needed. The room came together beautifully, “perfect” one might say. But there was one flaw: the men who hung the string lights up were not very detailed. It was a challenging task because they needed a large ladder. They had a ton of stuff to do, so I had grace for them when the lights weren’t impeccably spaced. I looked at it as giving the space rustic charm and a little character, since everything else was “perfect.”
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Phil. 4:8
But there was a woman on staff who couldn’t overlook the flaw. She asked them to fix it—a daunting task that would have impacted the rest of their time. They both refused. Then she turned to me and asked me to do it... repeatedly.
This was one of the first times ever in my life that I had the nerve to stand up to someone who struggled with perfectionism. I said through choked-back tears, “I’m not giving in to perfectionism anymore. If you want the lights adjusted, you are going to have to pull the ladder out and do it yourself.” It was exceedingly difficult for me to talk back to a superior, but I couldn’t give in to someone’s personal preferences any longer. If I did that for every person on the staff at that job, I would have spent all day, everyday catering to the personal preferences of human beings. I was there to serve Jesus. And I felt like He was already pleased with our decoration of the space.
I have a painting in my office. The issues behind the painting are pride, humility, and perfectionism. In the painting, Jesus’s face is lopsided; His eyes are not even; the beams of light are not straight; the shadows of the trees are not at the right angles. I worked on it for months. I corrected Jesus’s face tons of times. Every time I returned to the painting, His face was crooked again. Finally, after my last correction, God whispered to my heart to sign the painting. It was done. I was overjoyed to finally be done. Guess what? His face is still crooked. Jesus has taught me through the painting that He judges what is “excellent,” not my desire to have things perfect by human standards.
So, this is what I was feeling as I chopped onions in El Salvador. Peace. Why? Because no one was “expecting” the onions to be chopped microscopically due to personal preference. They were looking for a consistent product that would be pleasing to all the people who would eat it. They were serving food, not to make themselves happy, but to serve the missions team that was serving the Lord. This was a loving service of chopping onions “más pequeño.” If I hadn’t experienced all of the pain of annoyance from chopping vegetables for salads and the leftover waste, if I hadn’t experienced the gradual growth of loving service to my husband’s health needs, if I hadn’t wrestled with chopping onions for my son, if I hadn’t confronted the pain of perfectionism and stood up for my own personal boundaries, and wrestled with the difference between excellence and perfectionism in the painting, I never would have found the peace in chopping onions for Jesus in El Salvador.
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