Sometimes it is difficult to talk about things.
We just don’t want to rock the boat sometimes. It’s easier that way. Talking about things brings them to light. It’s better to just ignore issues than to possibly rock relationships. You just never know how it will change things or what the other person will say. It’s risky and it just seems better to live in false harmony than to make things difficult.
You know what I mean?
*******************************************************************************
It was this past Tuesday.
I was working with two of my other teammates to clean out the kitchen in prep for days of cooking ahead. We were taking into account all we had in the house and what we still needed to get. I was near the refrigerator when I noticed some food in the compost pile. Five perfectly good looking cloves of garlic. One of my other teammates passed by and saw them. She asked who threw out the garlic, and since she had been on cooking ministry last month, I asked her if the garlic still looked good. In my opinion it looked fine and could still be used. I was brought up in a household where you used everything, and I remember garlic lasting a while, so I was kind of frustrated that someone would just throw out perfectly good food.
She said it looked fine. I took it from the compost pile and put it on top of the refrigerator.
Later that day, my two other teammates and I were at the market shopping for the week ahead. One them asked if we needed more garlic, and I adamantly explained that we had enough.
“Are you sure?” -teammate number 1
“Yes, we have enough”- me
“I threw out some garlic today in the trash is that what you are talking about?” – teammate number two
“No, I got this from the compost and its fine.” – me
“Are you sure?” – teammate number 1
“Yeah, we are good!” – me (enthusiastically)
Ten minutes later we were riding our bikes home from the market, and I felt good about saving us money and time. I didn’t mention that the garlic from the compost was probably the same garlic that had first ended up in the trash. I felt sure it would be okay; any germs would get cooked out. I felt the Holy Spirit convict me about not sharing that part with them. I thought if I did then it wouldn’t go my way, and the garlic would end up not getting used and thrown away anyway.
As we are cutting up vegetables for lunch I again left like I should share with them where the garlic really came from. I didn’t see the big deal but decided it was better to just bring it up than to sit with it.
“Hey, so that garlic on the refrigerator, I’m pretty sure that’s the same garlic that you threw away.”-me, to teammate number two
“Victoria, I threw that away because I had sprayed it with Raid while killing cockroaches.”- teammate number two
“…oh.”-me (not enthusiastically)
We did not use that garlic.
It is now in the trash.
*******************************************************************************
