"I Ate This Pickle For You!"

We had narrowly made it through an incredibly demanding week of camp; escaping within an inch of our lives – or so it felt!  With enough collective sleep on board to almost spell our names (a very mild exaggeration), I suggested lunch in town.  With a shrug and a collective “why not?”... we drove into a tourist town on a holiday weekend to eat lunch at a trademark restaurant. (We were tired and our judgment was perhaps a little...flawed...don’t judge us).

As we sat down at our table I turned to the two individuals who had kept me sane and alive all week (not even a mild exaggeration) and said “I have a very important question!”  I don’t know if my face was serious or if they were still in camp mode but both responded with a very direct “what do you need?” kind of answer. 

“Pickles. Fried pickles.  Do you like them? Do you eat them?  I really enjoy them and they are good here but they only come in like a million of them so if I am going to justify getting them then people have to eat them with me...”

Keli sort of chuckled and said she would commit to one or two. 

Laura’s responded with “Umm...We sell them at work but I’ve never tried them. I don’t really like pickles very much.  So I’m only good for one.”

It was all I needed to confirm my appetizer order.  It wasn’t until later that I realized the absurdity of this conversation.  I don’t remember the exact context in which it arose – large parts of the day, including the drive home, are rather a blur – but somehow it occurred to me/us that I had purchased fried pickles because Laura agreed to eat one – even though she doesn’t enjoy pickles.  Though she said it wasn’t too bad – she intentionally ate a pickle, when she knew she normally wouldn’t – because I said I need people to commit to eating them with me. 

“I ate this pickle for you!” became the humorously stated reality.  We laughed.  A lot actually. Small things seem very funny in the context of sleep deprivation.  “It’ll be the name of the book you write about this week” I proclaimed through chuckles. “I Ate This Pickle for You! Subtitle: And other things I did against my better judgment for Anika Kasper, A Memoir”.  We laughed more I’m pretty sure.

It was honest.  There was more than a little bit of truth in the reality of the absolute absurdity. “I don’t like pickles – so of course I’ll eat a pickle for you!”  She did it for me. 

Not that such a fact was surprising.  A week of camp planned on the fly while serving at another camp, accomplished by a very small team on very little sleep...Laura was a God send.  I asked how comfortable she would be as my left-hand woman*. And she ended up saying “yes” every time I asked if she’d be willing to do something...leading crafts everyday for all of our campers, even when we had already discussed the fact she really really didn’t want to and I wouldn’t make her (being a character in the skit), and before I could really ask and/or with little to no warning (entertaining with silly camp songs while I looked for a misplaced cabin).  It was a thing. 

Laura loves Jesus, loves kids, and loves camp – but she ate proverbial pickles for me all week.      

I realized I had been too.  But, though this will sound a little terrible, I did it for God. I did it for the things I felt like He was asking me to do...

I was asked to organize, program, and lead a week of camp on 72 hours notice.  I didn’t want to.  But I am too passionate about the power of camp and in the end that’s why I agreed.  I couldn’t stand the idea of 25 kids showing up at camp and having an experience where they couldn’t see Jesus on the mountaintop, let alone not be able to go to camp at all.  I ate a pickle.

We didn’t hardly have a staff.  Let alone a nurse (until Keli came in and saved the day!).  It was up to me.  I didn’t want to.  I especially didn’t want to get up at 2am (and sometimes also 4 or 5am...) to do a glucose check on one of our campers.  A first-time medically needy camper who repeated daily how this was the “best week of his life!” and on Friday night, when we all but ready to collapse, declared he “never wanted to leave”.  So I ate a pickle.

A group of boys insisted on pranking.  It was severely affecting a cabin of little girls. I didn’t want to have to routinely discipline a whole cabin...but it is important to me that camp is a place of safety – even felt safety.  So I ate a pickle.

Firebowl was delayed 30 minutes one night because of a conversation which needed to happen with boy with a heck of story.  His answers made me think, I felt a nudge.  I audibly told God “no” five times as I walked to light the fire.  I didn’t want to share any part of my story – not this week.  But with the conversation still burning and the nudge still nudging, I shared just a piece.  A very small piece.  And I was so mad at God for that one – but I ate a pickle anyway. 

The list could go on – don’t worry, it won’t.  If you look at it, however, this whole week was nearly as absurd as Laura eating a fried pickle so I could.  But I did...  I wanted to look God dead in the eye as I drove home and state “I ate this pickle for You!”  He didn’t apologize.  Instead there was this sense in which the answer was “Good.”

When working with children my most oft stated phrase is “Safety first is my number two rule!”  It’s typically yelled after children running with their shoes untied or attempting some group lift into a tree or something.  Sometimes the kids catch that the phrase doesn’t necessarily make sense.  “So then what’s your number one rule?”  “Jesus” I say. “Jesus is my number one rule.  Jesus doesn’t always ask you to do safe things.  But once it checks out through Jesus...then safety first should be your next agenda”.

Eating pickles is making safety first my number two rule. 

I, me, what I want, what I think I need – the thing which is otherwise first on my agenda – it should always come second to whatever it looks like, whatever it means, to be found in obedience to what God’s asked me to do.

Part of me thinks every believer ought to be able to have a book entitled “I Ate This Pickle for You! And other things I did because God asked me to...”  It can’t and shouldn’t be a hubris book of personal accolades but instead a testimony of faithfulness. God’s faithfulness to you and God’s faithfulness through you.  Your faithfulness in service to God in places where it was asked of you whether it was a choice you would have made or not. Places where God said “whom shall I send?” And though maybe you knew you’re the last person you wanted to volunteer...you say “here I am, send me”. 

“I ate this pickle for You!” ... it’s the statement screamed at God when it feels as if you are eating the pickle which seems far too big for you and you’re in over your head.

“I ate this pickle for You...” It’s the whimpered words of desperation when you’re eating the pickle feeling all alone and wishing God would just show up, seeing as it was something He asked you to do...

“I ate this pickle for You.”  It’s a declaration of offering when you successfully finish something far beyond your power or your control or energy or strength or ability – when people want to congratulate you and exalt you for everything you’ve accomplished.  When you know it had nothing to do with you and so you give it back. “This I did for You alone, take it and use it for Your glory and honor, that Your will may be accomplished in me and through me...”

John 3:30 finds itself in the midst of a testimony by John the Baptist.  His followers are worried because, (I find this terribly funny), people are going to Jesus to be baptized instead of to John.  He responds that his job, the work he does, it is only to make way for Jesus.  He was eating pickles so Christ could be known.  And his attitude ends the conversation as to why “He must increase and I must decrease”.  It has to be more about making God known than his own popularity, ego, or aspiration. 

In the end... “I ate this pickle for you” was an act of humility and service and friendship on Laura’s part.  Though goofy, she was willing to leave her place of comfort and desire so the goals of another could be accomplished. It’s the same with us and God.  God calls us to respond not necessarily out of our comfort or desire but out our service and love for Him.  We need to be willing to risk ourselves for the sake of the one who put the entirety of Himself on the line for us. 

If Jesus really is my “number one rule” then more often than I do I need to be able to respond with a life which proclaims “I ate this pickle for you”...

*I’m left handed and routinely automatically turn to the left, when making a reference, looking for a volunteer, etc.  It’s a thing.

To avoid inevitable confusion...the pickle is a metaphor and I would dare say there will be very few circumstances in which the literal consumption of a pickle will be an act of bold, self-sacrificing obedience for God.  Unless of course you’re my brother-in-law...for if he ever eats a pickle, that’s exactly what it will be!