The Onions Moment

One sentence changed everything.

It was 9am on a Monday this past March, and I was chopping onions to prep for several days’ worth of dinners.

Now, you must know I am NOT the plan-ahead, feel-good-by-being-productive type of person. I’m more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, “whoops, it’s 5pm and what’s for dinner?” type of person.

The pre-planning came by necessity after the birth of our second son. After he was just a few months old, I returned to singing and worship leading at IHOPKC once again. Caring for an infant and a toddler and being out of the home part time necessitated planning and preparation — grocery shopping at 9pm, slow-cooker everything, and thank God for dry shampoo (am I right?)

On this particular Monday morning I was thinking of my life and schedule before I had kids schedule and comparing it with my new working-mom schedule. (Translation: I was having a pity party).

The webstream of the prayer room was playing in the background, and onion tear mixed with pity party tear…

Memories of long hours every day in the prayer room studying, reading the Bible, preparing for worship sets, reading commentaries, making outlines.

Now, I was waking up through the night to feed a baby, getting up early with a cheerful toddler, changing diapers all day every day, and chopping onions at 9am in order to be able to make it to my worship sets.

I truly love mom-life. I adore my children. I’m more in love with my husband after ten years of life together. And I feel most at home, well, at home. So what’s the big deal, right?

There was no question in my mind that the years of sitting before the Lord in the prayer room were gold. Truly, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He received every moment as love. But this new season — drenched in the practicals; light on the theologicals — had me thrown.

Am I done? Is my season of running hard after God, over? Do I just check back in after dropping off the last kid at college?

So there I am, chopping onions, and I hear that familiar whisper. The whisper that’s more like a tap on the shoulder than a voice.

“This is what zeal for My Name looks like.”

I know that voice.

I know Him. Just one sentence from Him cracks open my heart in all its hardness, washes away self-pity in all its vileness, and affirms me at the very core of who I’m made to be.

Even in all its “too-good-to-be-true”ness, in one moment I knew this was true. In the same way I knew my early years of devotion were beautiful to Him. My heart quietly wrapped itself around this one sentence, absorbing it as my own…

This is what zeal for Your Name looks like, God.

I have often thought of this moment. The Onions Moment. The moment He broke into the most mundane of thoughts and activities and gave the gift of truth.

Doing every last stinking mundane thing it took to be able to get to the prayer room and sing to Him was a new face of zeal.

Not just in the singing, but also in the actual moments of doing the tasks. The most ordinary of moments are made holy as I simply look to Him in the middle of it all.

My kitchen table becomes my altar. My boys banging pots behind me are my comrades in worship. Zeal for His Name looks like chopping onions.